How to keep up interest in your youth group
You'll need to plan how to keep up interest after your first meeting. Here's our tips on how.
Other meetings
- If there are newcomers make them feel welcome. Remember to introduce yourself and briefly explain the purpose of Amnesty and your group
- Change the content of your meetings to retain interest
- Arrange talks, show DVDs, hold discussions, organise creative actions
- Use our monthly mailings to help you plan your meetings
- Ask if people want to take turns in chairing meetings
- Try not to let meetings over run
- Ask for feedback on meetings
Tips for meetings
- Invite an Amnesty Speaker to come along and talk about our work and our latest campaigns
- Show people they can make a difference. Celebrate your success
- Be visible. You can never have enough publicity!
- Make sure everyone feels useful and involved
- Be open to new ideas and suggestions. Show gratitude for people’s efforts
- Don’t set unrealistic goals – aim for what you can actually achieve
Planning an event
Get people interested and involved straight away by planning for an event or campaign action.
Run a brainstorm session in small groups
- Split people into groups of 2-3
- Give them 5-10 minutes to come up withideas for your chosen event/action
- Ask each group for their ideas or, if you’re short of time, their best idea
- Write up ideas on a whiteboard as you go
- With the whole group decide on which idea(s) are best. Be realistic!
Create a plan
What - List all the things that need to be done to make your event a reality
When - Draw up a large calendar with weeks and days marked
Discuss - when each task needs to be done and write up on calendar
Who - Ask for volunteers for each task. Have regular catch-ups so that you can make sure plans are progressing