The featured story tellers and presenters at the up coming Ted-like “Sooke Talks” are ever getting ready to let you in.

L to R (top row): MC Tania Ehman, Christine Bossi, Emma Hornsby, Don Brown, Phoebe Dunbar, Parvez Kumar; (bottom row): Chloe Unger, Tracy Waters, Finn Unger and Rick Eby. Photo by Quintin Ehman.

Sooke Talks is co-hosted by the EMCS Society and the Sooke Harbour Toastmasters Club.  This special evening is set for Wed. Feb. 21 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at Edward Milne Community School. Tickets at $15 each are available online through CanadaHelps.org. Print-your-own tickets at $15 per person are available through Canada Helps. Tix are also available the Stick in the Mud Cafe, Shoppers Drug Mart and at the EMCS Society office at the school.  Online buyers are also welcome to donate to the theatre improvement campaign. Tax receipts will be issued for both individual tickets and donations.

Master of Ceremonies Tania Ehman from the Sooke Harbour Toastmasters Club will introduce the following speakers and “audience energizers” (in alphabetical order):

• Marjorie Baskerville: Discover the playful art of finding your own voice and giving it creative license to make a relaxed, improvised, joyous noise. Her message: “Don’t be afraid to sing, the world needs your voice!”
• Christine Bossi: Frontline experiences with Red Cross International in battle-scarred Africa while helping prisoners of war, families and child soldiers find their way home;
• Don Brown (Bahá’í Community of Sooke) and Rick Eby (Sooke Baptist Church): Making the essential personal shift from “me first” to “we first” with the Charter For Compassion;
• Phoebe Dunbar: Anecdotes from a local legend who, over nearly 50 years, has built community in Sooke with creativity, inspiration, hard work and much laughter. Everyone has a gift to give their community. What’s yours?
• Emma Hornsby: A Grade 12 EMCS student courageously transforms her anxiety into a learning experience. Emma will share the coping tools she’s learned with the goal of assisting others who suffer from this common, often debilitating condition.
• Parvez Kumar: Up, up and away with the (believe it or not) future of flying cars. Recognized as one of Canada’s space-age pioneers, Parvez trained the first wave of Canadian astronauts, including Col. Chris Hadfield and Canada’s new Governor General, Julie Payette.
• Finn and Chloe Unger: A pair of young people from Sooke’s InishOge Farm reveal how their discovery of wolves on the farm’s back-40 sparked a passionate inquiry into the fate of this vital but misunderstood keystone species.
• Tracy Waters: A master of the symphonic gong, sound healer and a teacher at Sooke Yoga will ring the night’s changes while also leading a literal seventh-inning stretch.

MC Tania Ehman is a gifted speaker and coach herself. She finished in the top-20 among more than 30,000 competitors at the World Championship of Public Speaking in Washington, DC. two summers ago.