Top Tips
- Tell people what to expect if they join your group, and most of all why it will be good!
- Chat to new people and make them feel welcome;
- Get people involved straight away, have a workshop or campaign activity planned.
St. Andrews University P&P at one of their first group meetings
Your first meeting is your chance to inspire people who were interested at your Freshers Fair stall to become real members of your group and of the People & Planet network. So it’s really important that the meeting goes well and gives people reasons to keep coming back!
Plan your meeting in advance.
1. Decide on the aims of the meeting
e.g. to get people to join your group, to raise awareness about your campaigns or decide on the ones you want to run for the term/year.
2. Come up with topics for the meeting that fit your aims
e.g. an introduction to your group/campaigns, an introduction to the P&P national network.
3. Think of the tools and activities you could use to make your meeting participative and enjoyable
e.g. a film or talk.
4. Have your second meeting arranged in advance, so you can tell people about it and keep up the momentum.
Here are a few specific ideas to help you make your first meeting as interesting and exciting as possible:
- [Invite](mailto: universities@peopleandplanet.org) someone from the support office to talk at your meeting
- Try to get some (Fairtrade) tea, coffee and snacks for people when they come in, and perhaps have a display or some leaflets.
- Have one or several people acting as doorkeepers, welcoming people in and helping any latecomers catch up.
- Start with an icebreaker.
- Introduce who you are, what you are trying to do, what got you interested in doing this. As well as talking about the social and environmental justice issues you want to address, mention the things you want to learn and get out of the group.
- Find out what brought other people along - perhaps they could write up a couple of ideas onto Post-It notes and stick them all up on the wall.
- Show a video or give a talk about some activity the group might undertake.
- Get people excited about something. Shared Planet is almost guaranteed to inspire people to join your group and start campaigning. Also, if you’ve got an event planned for the term, talk about that too.
- Get some suggestions as to what the group might do - maybe using Post-it notes again.
- Achieve something! Have campaign postcards to fill in, for example.
- Get people involved - perhaps give them a chance to take on a role, have a social, or agree to talk more about their ideas for actions. Some people will want to take on a role straight away, others will prefer to leave it until later. Do give those who want to as much opportunity to take things on as possible.
- Give them a leaflet with your contact details and the date of the next meeting.
- At the end, re-state anything that has been agreed.
- Collect contact details.
- Don’t try to fit too much in - keep the meeting to about an hour, focus on the important stuff - that it’s going to be FUN and that you are going to achieve LOTS.
- Go for a social afterwards!