4 Jan 2014, Bangalore SHG meeting minutes

Today’s Session of Bangalore SHG was filled with lot of fun and activities. The meeting was attended by Akash, Dinesh, Suraj, Pramod, Jaisimha, Sharad and Anshuman. At start of the meeting, Dinesh highlighted some of the points of why coming to SHG is important, even for him now, as follows,

1        SHGs is a place where we don’t fear speaking, we don’t mind our stammering, we allow our heart to be open and let it be spoken. It leads to improvement in communication skills because of the activities such as Introduction rounds, impromptu speech, calling, paragraph reading, skit/play, prepared speeches, etc. These activities gives us confidence to speak and reduce our fear of public speaking

2  SHGs to a PWS is like lubricating/servicing to a motorbike even though it is functioning well now but to ensure better performance in future we need to take it out for service. It should not happen that when we fail then only we remember SHG. So even though we are practicing techniques and speaking properly but we still need to attend SHG so as to service ourselves to be ready for the future

3   SHG is place where new member can get guidance and direction from the old members. So it provides PWS with opportunity to directly learn about stammering from old members who very high knowledge about stammering and get the benefits of techniques. It provides old members with the opportunity to help the new ones

4    SHG provides PWS with compassionate listening ears. We listen without interrupting or asking question to somebody speaking. We understand their concerns and respect their voice.

5.  And Finally SHG is a place where we laugh a lot because of Devil Dinesh J . We really practice laughing therapy more than speech therapy!

Then the first phase of meeting began which was Introduction round for each participant followed by Q&As. It went for about 30 mins.

Then Impromptu Speech phase begin where Akash provided members with a photo for which they have to speak with 30 seconds for preparation between 3 mins to 4 mins. It went very well, participants were able to extract a lot of humor and message from the pictures. Pramod excelled with very good use of word, Anshuman with a very good social message and Dinesh with a very good story related to identifying yourself and a very strong self-help message.

Dinesh talked about a Tiger cub who was lost with a sheep since the birth and came to think of himself as a cub only. It was not able to identify himself as Tiger but as sheep. So one day when a passerby see Tiger cub playing along with sheep he was astonished so he asked him about his nature. The cub replied that it was a sheep and but passerby said that you are Tiger cub, cub didn’t agreed. To convince the cub, he took it to the river and from the first time in his life Tiger cub by seeing its reflection in the river released that he was not a sheep but a Tiger cub. So Dinesh concluded by saying that we should not let others define ourselves, we should take charge be responsible and do what we want to do, not what others wants us to do.

Then Pramod from his experiences of SSBs highlighted several important things related to Picture Perception D Test (PPDT)

·         Highlight the past of picture so that the audience gets to know what has happened in the past which has led to this development

·         Explain what is happening right now in the picture

·          Tell the audience about what is going to happen in the future

·         Always choose the hero of the story and try to revolve story around him

·         Conclude with moral of the story

Then Phone Phobia session begins where PWS has to talk to a fellow PWS regarding new speech therapy program called McGuire and sell it to the PWS or about themselves to PWS. Pramod, Jaisimha and Suraj took part in this. Pramod did very well (He was able to sell a speech therapy for 25k), Jaisimha enjoyed his conversation with a fellow PWS and Suraj was very unfortunate as his call was cut down by the PWS after progressing for some time.

Then the session was concluded. Thereafter some of the members have hangover at MG Road.

Report is written by Suraj.