When Our Club Had One Member - but grew to be a President's Distinguished Club

Trophy for BHA as President's Distinguished club.

BHA, like many clubs, in Toastmasters International, Rotary clubs, and elsewhere, has membership ups and downs. "Braddell Heights Advanced speakers' Club, once had only one member," said Mr Poh.

So, how did the club grow?

That member said he wanted 'a full house'. He aimed to have 25 people at a meeting.

1 So he invited everybody he knew.
2 He asked them all to bring along at least one friend.

When people came along they found a busy thriving meeting. Full of good speakers and VIPs The visitors joined the club, which grew and grew.
............
Clubs have their ups and downs, like every day of your life, and every year of your life.  The club grew and became successful. It produced lots of contest winners and had the motto, we make champions for life. Even non-members came back to us to get coaching from our members. Manoj was so pleased with our help, that he gave our club one of his trophies which is in our cupboard at the Community Centre.

Then things went down to a trophy he would leave the club. We had several presidents. One was asked to leave. I was sorry to hear this. I felt it would have been better if he had been encouraged to stay and if necessary help him improve either his performance or the group's cohesion as a team. Another member left for a Mandarin club which started.  Just before I took over the previous President's mother had died and she left the country.
The Community Centre, which originally gave us a room for free started charging us 30 dollars per member which left us little money over for  

  business  cards and food and trophies for contests. One member said if he was not