Storytelling and Public Speaking for NGOs
KUCHING: Whetstone Consultancy in collaboration with the Social Welfare Council of Sarawak will run a training workshop – “From heart to heart: Storytelling and Public Speaking for NGOs” – at the Sarawak State Library in Petra Jaya here on August 19.
This is part of a series of workshops on capacity building for NGOs being developed to service the affiliates of the Social Welfare Councils and other interested parties.
Whetstone Consultancy is a human resource training company, bringing together some people with experience, skills and passion to develop leadership and management training for voluntary organisations.
The lead trainer is Dunstan Chan, a lawyer by training, who has over 30 years of experience working with voluntary organisations. He serves as the fundraising chairman of the Sarawak Thalassaemia Society and is the immediate past president of the Federation of Thalassaemia Societies Malaysia.
Whetstone Consultancy has developed many programmes, including NGO Best Practice & Good Governance, Rule of Law at Grassroots Level, Conflict Management, Improve your EQ, Productive Meetings, the Art of Chairmanship, Communication Skills, Leadership in Voluntary Organisations, Charting a Course for Success. These programmes will be run at regular intervals throughout the year.
The Sarawak Social Welfare Council is a non-profit organisation with 38 member organisations. It was founded over 60 years ago to coordinate all social welfare activities in the state. Over the years, more organisations, each with its cause and focus, joined. The Council sees the need to support its members by providing the activists with the skills training to lead and manage their organisations more effectively.
Regarding this next workshop, the president of the Council, Major Francis Ng, said, “I know public speaking is not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. However, it is a truism that ‘if you cannot tell, you cannot sell’. As NGOs, our success and sustainability depend on our ability to sell and get people to buy our cause. Yes, we are all salesmen – we need to sell our cause to the public. We need to touch their hearts to get support. We choose to call this workshop ‘From Heart to Heart’ because we speak from our hearts to touch their hearts”.
The workshop is open to all NGOs; those interested can contact (Zheng Huey) 016-395-9422; zhenhueyc@ gmail.com, (Dunstan Chan) 016- 888- 6040; dunstan.