For Schools
The three founders of The Speaking Well met through our association at Toastmasters International, the worldwide public speaking organisation. All of us had gone to Toastmasters in the first place to gain confidence in public speaking each previously having a lack of confidence ranging from Tony’s terror, to Mandip’s reticence to Alan’s pounding heart at the thought of speaking.
Each one of us gained immensely from our time in Toastmasters and gave back to the organisation by taking officer roles at club level and helping the wider running of the organisation, Alan and Tony having both been President of Harrovians Speakers Club.
We have now set up an online educational company called The Learning Well creating a maths website,TimesTablesMaths.com, and being in the process of completing another site to help in boosting children’s abilities and confidence for their learning, memory, literacy, writing and speaking.
Through this work it has become clear to us that there is very little provision for Primary School age children with respect to helping them learn to speak to groups of children and adults, in other words public speaking.
The Learning Well was invited by a leading charity, The Citizenship Foundation, to contribute to their ‘Right to Speak’ campaign forum on the provision of help to the wider population in public speaking. It became very clear in this forum, attended by many highly respected speaking related organisations, that there was very little, if any, provision for helping primary age children develop the ability to speak in the public setting in all its guises.
To address this issue The Learning Well has sponsored the setting up of a non profit making organisation in order to help children develop their abilities in the field of public speaking. We have called this The Speaking Well.
Signed
Alan McMahon
Tony Lazar
Mandip Sohal
