Sample Ladies’ Night Speech: Ladies Club President/Chairperson Outgoing address

Honoured guest/s, Ladies,

If it is true that an ideal marriage is where there is an ideal husband I suppose an ideal club is one where there is an ideal President/officer/chairperson. Now no matter how hard I try to convince myself I cannot believe that I was ever an ideal anything. What I do know is though that my term of office as President/officer/chairperson has been the most stimulating, interesting period of my life.

I have, you see, in that short time learned many lessons. I know now that our committee is remarkably hard working. I know that our members are wonderful people. I know now that the work we do is only the tip of the iceberg of need.

I have been blessed by this knowledge because you see before this I took the club/association/group very much for granted. I attended meetings, I took part in events but I was always inclined to go with the flow. I know now that if our club/association/group is to be alive and survive that is not enough.

We are living in a world of, lets be realistic about this, greed and apathy. We are living in an age where people prefer to look at life on the TV screen rather than to live life in their local community. We are living in an age of competing attractions.

We must ask ourselves then what we have to offer and how do we offer it’ There are many people who would have much to offer our club as members. Have we tried to entice them to join’ In fact is our club the sort of club we’d like to join if we weren’t already members?

I believe that we cannot afford to stay as we are. I believe that we need to change with the times. I believe we need to be more assertive about what we want in our club and from each other.

Having said that I do not think we should ever change the core values of our club. We need to keep, the friendliness, the warmth and the compassion. Perhaps though we should channel these things in new and interesting ways. Otherwise I am afraid that we will become old-fashioned and irrelevant to the world at large and that would be a pity. The world, whether it knows it or not, needs clubs/associations/bodies such as ours. We have a lot to offer.

I have to offer our new President/officer/chairperson my congratulations. I wish her well in the job she has undertaken. I know she will bring to the job her very own form of leadership. Naturally I shall always be available to help her in any way possible.

Today, like the cowboys of old, I hang up my guns. Like those cowboys though I’ll have lots of yarns to tell about when I was the President/officer/chairperson.

Now that’s really what you would call “The good old days”.