 In this video, we look at the new public speaking program, SpeechCraft from Toastmasters International. Let's get started. SpeechCraft is one of the best tools in the Toastmasters kit to present the fundamentals of public speaking to non-members and to convert participants into club members. Experienced members in a Toastmasters club present the program ideally as an 8-session program to participants though it can be presented as 4 or 6 sessions but 8 sessions is considered ideal. The SpeechCraft program is now updated similar to the Pathways Education program where participants can access digital content to prepare for the speech project. The SpeechCraft is conducted by a SpeechCraft coordinator with the support of senior members from the club who act as volunteers. Before you start planning the program, visit SpeechCraft.Toastmasters.org. The newly designed website has detailed information that you need even before you start planning the program. A frequently asked section FAQ is also available to clarify common issues. Once you are confident that you want to go ahead, the person who will be the SpeechCraft coordinator heads over to the Toastmasters store to purchase the digital bundle. The entire SpeechCraft bundle is priced at $50 plus applicable taxes. Since it is a digital download, there are no shipping costs. What you pay at the store is your actual material cost for the program. The bundle contains digital material for the SpeechCraft coordinator and digital access for 5 participants. And this part is extremely important. Each bundle is exactly 5 participants. You cannot do a SpeechCraft for 6 participants. It should be an increments of 5. I am sure many clubs will find this restrictive but that is how it is as of now. Once you complete the payment process, you will receive an email confirming the purchase of the SpeechCraft bundle. If you go to your Toastmaster profile and look at my downloads, you will find a link to download the digital bundle of SpeechCraft. But this is a bit of a red herring. The download contains only a flyer and a brochure. Ideally, it should include instructions for the SpeechCraft coordinator. The next step is to go back to the SpeechCraft website and create an event that is linked to your digital purchase. Make sure you are logged in using your Toastmaster profile and click on create new event. This page allows you to set up your SpeechCraft program. Start by selecting the club that will be hosting the SpeechCraft. I will select one of my clubs where this event will be hosted. If your club has a website, you can place the link of the website here. We don't have a website but we do have a Facebook page. So let me put that. This is where you enter the digital order number. You can find the order number in your profile if you go to order history. And the order number will be available here. Select it. Copy it and paste it here. If the order number is valid, you should get this message saying that this is a valid order number. The person creating this event will be the SpeechCraft coordinator. And that's why we need to make sure that we verify the coordinator information. If you want to add any additional information, you can enter it here but it's optional. Next, enter the event details. Let me call the event SpeechCraft by capital speakers. The time zone is listed. Since we are in Kuwait, UTC plus 3 is correct. Next, we indicate the number of sessions this program will be conducted. In my case, it's going to be 8 sessions, the ideal number of sessions. Next, enter the start and end date for your program. In my case, I'm planning to start it somewhere in March and end it in April. You can also input the start and end time of your events. In my case, I plan to do it from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. You can also enter the days when the event will be conducted. Since I'm not yet sure about the days, I will leave it blank. It's optional as of now. Next, select the meeting format. The program can be conducted online in person or a combination of online and in person. In my case, I'm going to do it online because the lockdown is still in effect in our country and we can't meet in person and I don't expect we will in the very near future. Location. Since it's online, it's going to be Zoom meetings. And finally, you can set up a price for the course. Select your currency and the price per participant. In my case, I'm going to run this program at cost which is $10 per participant. Since there are 5 participants and the cost is $50, so $10 into 5 will recover the cost of the materials. Select on I agree to the terms of the Toastmaster Speechcraft program and click submit button. The event is now successfully created. I can click on go to event details and here is my Speechcraft event. If any of the event details need to be changed such as the time, the location, we can click on this edit button and then change the relevant details in the screen. Now that our event is set up, we can start adding participants. We call them speech crafters and as we can see, we have 0 of 5 seats filled. Click on add speech crafter and it will ask you whether the person is a current member of Toastmasters or is new to Toastmasters. Ideally, speech crafters should be new to Toastmasters. All you need to do is enter the name of the person who will be joining a program and the email address and an email will be sent to the person to become part of the Speechcraft project. Once I select the participants and collect their fees, I will enter their details, enter their email and click on the submit button. That's all there is to it. The participant will get a link to join the Speechcraft program. Now that our event is verified and created and hopefully all the 5 participants have been added, we can go to our Speechcraft learning section. To do that click on the go button under the Speechcraft learning and this takes us to the learning management system of the Toastmasters Speechcraft program. The Speechcraft coordinator has all the information required to conduct the event successfully including the learning material, the resources such as the agenda, the outlines, the evaluation forms and it even includes a Speechcraft dashboard which is like the base camp manager where you can monitor the status and the progress of your Speechcrafters, how many speeches they have given and whether they have marked them as completed or not. Since I have not yet started the event, most of the information right now is empty but as we proceed with the project everything will start falling into place. Once this program is completed, I will post a follow up video on my experience of conducting an actual Speechcraft program using the new learning system of Toastmasters. A few important notes regarding the new program. First of all, a Speechcraft is not a permanent access that means once the program is completed you will lose access to your Speechcraft dashboard you will have access to your Speechcraft for up to 90 days from the end of your event date. Keep this in mind when you are planning your Speechcraft. The next important point is what if you manage to get your Speechcrafter to join your club as a Toastmaster? What about the speech projects that they delivered in the Speechcraft program? As per the FAQ you can see that if the Speechcrafter managed to give one speech that can be credited towards the ice breaker in the Pathways Education system and in the extreme case if the Speechcrafter managed to give up to 7 speeches then when the person joins Toastmasters level 1 can be marked completed, one project from level 2 which is the introduction to Toastmaster mentoring can be marked as completed and two electives from level 3 can be marked as completed. And that's a quick overview of the new Speechcraft program from Toastmasters International. I hope it helps you to plan your own Speechcraft. I wish you all the best.