Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Sunday Dec 15, 2024
Thursday, 31 December 2020 00:44 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The Speech Craft program bandwagon of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka (CMA Sri Lanka) rolled along despite the impediment of the COVID 19 pandemic, conducting the entire twelve sessions of the Batch 21 Speech Craft meetings online.
Since the inaugural batch of CMA students in 2015 volunteered to form the CMA Sri Lanka Toastmasters Club, the Speech Craft program grew from strength to strength under the visionary leadership of Prof. Lakshman R. Watawala, who recognised the value addition of communication skill development and leadership in the progress of one’s career path and made the speech craft module mandatory to obtain the highly acclaimed membership of the CMA and to attain the qualification of ACMA.
“The ACMA accreditation is well recognised locally and globally”, said Prof. Watawala in his address as the Chief Guest at the final Awards Ceremony meeting of Batch 21, concluded online on Sunday, 13 December.
The uniqueness of Batch 21 is that all meetings, including the final awards meeting, were conducted online and the speech crafters and the facilitators never met physically, but interacted and enjoyed fellowship on the virtual platform. The resulting virtual reality with live participation proved outstandingly exceptional.
Three level-three speeches on ‘Artificial Intelligence in the workplace and how to prepare for it’, ‘Read and Understand’ and ‘Sports and Life’, laid the foundation for the future trend and excellence in performance. These speeches were preceded by two inspiring and motivating level-two speeches on the topics ‘Smart phones does not make you smart’ and ‘Maybe I’ll die, but I can try’.
The speeches were of very high quality and standard with immense information, knowledge, inspiration, motivation and advice. The prepared speeches were followed by six impromptu speeches by volunteers on varied topics, conveying further information, knowledge and advice.
‘Environmental Pollution’, ‘The second phase of COVID-19 and its’ impact’, ‘Real wealth isn’t money’, ‘Dieting – the best Health plan’, ‘The secret to enjoy life overcoming stress’ and ‘The lessons of love from the romantic tragedy and legendary movie ‘Titanic’’ were the topics covered in the impromptu speeches.
The entire programme was conducted like clockwork by the speech crafters and the unique presentation of Certificates was done by CMA Sri Lanka President Prof. Watawala and CMA Toastmasters Club President T.M. Mayuran Ramanathan.
The awards presentation was conducted by the Course Director Dian Abeyewardene and every participant commended the excellence of the programme and thanked the visionary leadership of Prof. Watawala for making the Speech Craft module mandatory to obtain the CMA membership. Further, generous accolades were given to the Course Director Abeywardene and Head of Administration Shanthi Maheswaran and the IT team who facilitated the virtual platform.
The Vote of Thanks, presented by a speech crafter, was highly acclaimed; and appreciated the fact that the entirety of the course conducted online is of excellent quality and high standard and endorsed the decision to continue the conduct of speech craft on the virtual platform.
