In Agora, there's a lot of flexibility in terms of configuring the agenda for each meeting.  We have so many activities that it's impossible to fit them all into a single meeting. This is one of the factors that make Agora meetings so distinctive - they are not always the same boring pattern applied repeatedly. They are much more varied, fun and yet they retain the educational focus.

 

Required Meeting Characteristics


Clubs are free - and we encourage it - to introduce new roles, change the ordering of sections, introduce completely new ones or try other innovative ideas, as long as they are aligned with the goals, mission, and ideals of the Foundation and are educational in nature.

However, there are a set of very minimal required meeting elements that must be present in each regular club meeting to accomplish the main function of the meeting: the education of members in a particular set of skills and following the educational program of Agora Speakers International.  This also helps ensure a minimum amount of consistency among clubs worldwide.

The different types of clubs have different requirements regarding how closely they need to adhere to the Agora Educational Model. Please check the specific article for the type of club you're running.

You can use the Meeting Activities page as a template for configuring an agenda.

More specifically, the minimum required elements in a regular meeting are the following:

  • There needs to be one single Meeting Leader throughout the whole meeting.
  • All sections and participants of the meeting must be timed by a Timer and their use of language assessed by the Grammarian.
  • Unless the club has chartered in the last month, there needs to be at least one project speech  ( a speech that is done according to one of the Educational Program projects).
  • All speeches need to be evaluated.
    • If they are project speeches, they need to be evaluated according to the project's evaluation sheets by at least one evaluator. 
    • If they are non-project speeches, they need to be evaluated according to the specific goals and objectives that the speaker has set for himself, which need to be known in advance. A club can choose to have more than one evaluator evaluate the same speech, delivering what is usually called "panel evaluations".
       
  • At least one evaluator should also explain the speech's objectives before the speech itself so that the audience knows what to expect and what to give feedback on. This is not necessary if the objectives are the same as a previous speech and have already been explained (which can happen, for example, if two or more speakers in a meeting deliver the same project)
     
  • The evaluation of every project must be delivered orally and publicly by the evaluator(s) in the same meeting so that both the speaker and the audience can benefit from the feedback provided. The evaluation must be done using the appropriate evaluation forms for the project.
     
  • The audience needs to be given 1-2 minutes after the speech to provide written feedback to the speaker.
     
  • There needs to be a Meeting Evaluator for evaluating the meeting overall and the roles that didn't receive feedback from specific evaluators.
These are the requirements for the regular, periodic meetings. For special occasions, parties, gatherings, special sessions, contests, debates, etc., the format is free. However, the number of these special meetings may not be greater, per month, than the number of regular meetings.