What is Pathways?

Pathways is Toastmasters International's learning experience — the modern curriculum members use to build speaking and leadership skills at their own pace.

How it works

You choose a path aligned with your goals. There are several to pick from, each focused on a theme such as presentation skills, leadership, or persuasion.
Each path is organised into five levels, moving from foundational skills to more advanced projects.
Each level contains projects — a mix of required and elective — and most projects are completed by giving a speech at a club meeting.
You track your progress online through Base Camp, Toastmasters' learning portal.

Your first few weeks

Nobody expects you to have it all figured out on day one. Most new members settle in over their first month or so, roughly in this order:

Choose a path. Pick the one that sounds closest to what you want to get better at. You're not locked in forever — see Choosing a path below.
Give your Ice Breaker. Every path opens with the same first project: a short speech introducing yourself to the club. It's the friendliest audience you'll ever have, and nobody is grading you on polish. Let whoever plans your club's agenda know when you'd like a slot.
Take a supporting role. Before or after your Ice Breaker, sign up for one of the smaller meeting roles, such as timer or grammarian. It's a low-pressure way to get on your feet, learn how a meeting flows, and meet people. The meeting roles guide explains each one.
Set up Base Camp. Sign in, open your path, and find your first project. The steps are further down this page.

Choosing a path

Not sure where to start? Take our short quiz: a few questions about what you want to work on, and it suggests a path or two. It's only a suggestion. There's no wrong choice — every path builds core communication and leadership skills, and you can take more than one over time.

Setting up Base Camp

Base Camp is where your path actually lives: the project descriptions, the objectives for each speech, and the record of which levels you've finished. Getting in usually takes a few minutes:

Wait for your membership to go through. Your club sends your membership to Toastmasters International, and your member account is created once it's processed. If you haven't had a welcome email after a week or two, ask one of your club's officers.
Sign in with your member account. Go to basecamp.toastmasters.org and sign in with your toastmasters.org account, using the email you joined with. If you've never signed in before, you may need to create or reset a password for that account first.
Check your path. If you chose a path when you joined, it should already be there. If you haven't chosen one yet, choose it from your Toastmasters account on toastmasters.org. Your club's Vice President Education can help if you get stuck.
Open Level 1 and find your first project. Read through what the Ice Breaker asks of you before you write your speech — each project has its own objectives, and your evaluator will be listening for them.
Mark projects complete as you go. After you give a speech, record it in Base Camp. When you've finished a level, your club's Vice President Education usually confirms it there.

If something looks wrong in Base Camp, such as the wrong path or a missing level, your Vice President Education is the person to ask.

How your club tracks your progress

There are two places your progress shows up, and they do different jobs.

Base Camp is the official record. The project material, your completed projects and your level completions all live there, and that's what Toastmasters International counts.

GavelUp is your club's day-to-day view. If your club uses GavelUp, it shows which path you're on, how far through each level you are, and the speeches you have coming up on future agendas. It's a companion to Base Camp, not a copy of it: it doesn't hold any of the project material, and nothing you do in GavelUp updates Base Camp, so you still record your projects there. You can tick off projects in GavelUp yourself, and your club's officers help keep it current. If the two ever disagree, Base Camp is the one to trust, and it's worth letting an officer know.

Why members like it

Pathways turns "I want to get better at speaking" into a concrete sequence of projects, each with clear objectives and built-in feedback from your club. You always know what you're working on next.