By: Sean F. Forrester, DTM, Chief Educational Ambassador, District 48

One of the things I have been monitoring this year on a monthly basis is the number of Educational Awards earned in both the Traditional program and the new Pathways program by the District membership. Ideally, I would like to see an orderly transition from Traditional Awards into Pathways Awards as we approach the end of the year.

In this first chart, for the Toastmaster year 2018-19 (which was the first full year with Pathways), you can see a pretty close balance between the two programs. Overall, you will note that 561 members together earned 922 awards, with almost 48% of these from Pathways.

In this second chart, for the Toastmaster year 2019-present, you can see the Traditional Awards are down about 40% overall for the same time period. The Competent Communicator Award is individually down about 60% and the Competent Leader down about 39%. With the Pathways Awards, we are now ahead of our entire 2018-19 year and only two-thirds of the year has passed.

Two final statistics need to be highlighted in this second slide. The first is that 84 clubs within the District have earned one or more Pathways Awards this year. This is almost two-thirds of all the clubs within District 48. And 339 individual members have earned one or more Pathways awards in 2019-20. While this is only 12% of all the membership of the District, it is more than the entire 2018-19 year, and shows we have momentum on our side.

Keep “Stepping Up A Level”!

If you have specific questions or comments, please feel free to email me at [email protected].