Change Your World #73 - How does your group celebrate?

[Howard]

How does your local group celebrate? How do you let your hair down in style? Have you tried anything in the past that has been a tremendous success? Or a complete failure?

In the latest issue of Change Your World* (issue 73) we discussed the importance of regular celebration and what the benefits can be to your group (if you haven’t read it you can download a PDF at http://www.foe.co.uk/community/local_groups/resource/how_to_guides.html)

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject. You can post your past experiences, triumphs, challenges or questions here.

We’ll try to keep checking in, but if you think you can answer a fellow posters query please feel free.

Thanks

Howard and Tim
Friends of the Earth Network Developers

*"Change your World" is our magazine for local group members.

[DB]

My group (Hackney & Tower Hamlets) make sure we go to the pub after meetings, and try to remember during meetings to think back on what we've achieved, look at any press coverage we've got, etc - both to cheer ourselves up and to impress any newcomers.  We have socials a few times a year, invites ourselves to each other's parties, and hold an annual "re-energising meeting" where we all bring photos/clippings/memories of things we've done over the year, give ourselves a general pat on the back, drink some wine and eat some food.

The other thing we're trying to get better at is clearly defining our objectives at the start of a campaign, so we can tell more eaily when we've won!

I still think we could get better at celebrating though - e.g we could have made a bit more of our role in The Big Ask.  It's so easy to just move on to the next thing, there's always so much we want to do.  Celebrating is important though isn't it - we're all volunteers, we need to have fun and be reminded we're having an impact!

[Trick_Cyclist]

Socialise....with my local FoE group?     Not likely.

[Howard]

Socialise....with my local FoE group?     Not likely.

The thread is about celebrating success with your group, rather than just socialising.

In the Amnesty group I used to run, we combined celebrating, campaigning, socialising and fundraising by holding music nights at the end of, or as part of, campaigns. It's just a matter of hiring a venue like a pub and putting on a few acoustic acts. Quite straight forward stuff.

You can charge a couple of quid for entrance, get people to sign campaign postcards and letters while they are there, have a drink with your group, and recruit people on the night. On one night we raised 700 quid and got 3 new members.

Hx

[Tom W]

How do we celebrate? Well, we hold our meetings in a pub anyway so we usually have a drink and raise a toast to whatever success we'ev had. For smaller local stuff we say a quick well done to each other and particularly to whoever has led on the issue.

We have held a few social events over the last year....or had shorter meetings with less formal structure followed by time spent chatting on other matters.

One thing i always do is have an agenda item titled 'Feedback from previous campaigns.' That's our space in the meeting for us to talk over work we've done and see how it went. We usually use that space to celebrate stuff done good.

I've just received the Big Ask celebration pack so will be sharing that with the group on the 18th. I was thinking of taking along some kind of cake when my fellow coordinator David announced he would bring a cheesecake. You always need food for celebrating. So we'll eat that, raise a glass to the Big Ask, toast our successes so far with the renewables campaign and look forward to 2009.

I know a fellow group is involved in a local event where they have a stall/wall space. So they're using the celebration poster and Big Ask materials to make a display piece outlining their success with the climate change act. We'd love to do that but we don't have any local events we can tie into. But we'll certainly be plugging the Big Ask all throughout 2009 and beyond.