Steps 8 to 9: Getting Organised


Step 8 - Use the contact details handouts to make a phone tree before the next meeting.

There is nothing worse than having to suddenly cancel an action club meeting or rearrange it due to an unforeseen emergency only to be faced with having to make a long list of calls. The purpose of the phone tree will be to provide you with an effective means of communicating important messages to the action club members outside of meetings quickly and easily. In step 7 you would have given action club contact details forms to the members to fill in during the first meeting. The next step is to use these to create a phone tree using the action club phone tree template. (See below)

The action club phone tree template itself contains the instructions you will need to fill it out and how it will work. Once completed you will need to make copies of it and give it out to all the members at the next meeting. It will be their responsibility to phone and pass on any messages they receive to the person below them etc.

The phone tree is most useful when you have to get messages to members quickly on short notice. If you have plenty of forewarning then perhaps the best means of communicating might be by group email. So long as everyone has internet access there are plenty of sites that offer free email accounts, for example www.hotmail.com and www.yahoo.com

Resource

Action club emergency phone tree: (In PDF) (In Microsoft Word)

Step 9 - At the next meeting

'Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.'

— Mother Teresa

A good idea at the beginning of every meeting is to have a rough outline of all the goals that need to be achieved in the meeting and decisions that need to be made and allocate enough time to each of them. This can be shown to everyone before the meeting so everyone knows what needs to be covered. It helps to prevent distractions and time wasting that can make a meeting ineffective or a waste of time. If you think it maybe helpful, feel free to use the action club agenda sheet provided below. Like all our documents, we have put it in Microsoft Word so you can alter it as you please.

Here is a potential agenda for the second meeting:

Welcome everybody back and welcome any new members and invite them to give their name and say a little about themselves if they choose.

Invite people to take on responsibilities for the meeting. For an action club for young people someone can take on the responsibility of chairing or facilitating the meeting. They would make sure everyone gets a say but move things on to keep everything on schedule if people become overly focused on details. Details can come later. Members could be encouraged to take turns facilitating at future meetings so everyone who wants a chance gets to have a go. If everyone wants to do it from the start, draw straws for it.

'I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.'

— Mahatma Gandhi

It is also always good to have someone take down notes about important points and decisions. Later these can be written up so everyone can refer back to them as necessary. Encourage people to share what they learned about the particular project and its underlying issue or cause. This should help to develop a good, solid, view of the situation, and also expose any weaknesses in everyones' combined knowledge that may need further research to clear up.

Brainstorming

The next stage could be to 'brainstorm' a list of goals and objectives you want the project to achieve. Then brainstorm ideas for achieving those goals and objectives. Brainstorming needs to be fun and exciting. It's good to encourage friendly competition and laughter. The basic rules of brainstorming are: wild and crazy is fine; more ideas are better than less; silence is fine as it means people are thinking. To facilitate brainstorming you will need a large, poster board or chalkboard to post or write down the ideas the members come up with.

Once that is done go through each of the proposed activities and determine how well it will meet the proposed goals and objectives by balancing difficulty against effectiveness. You can also look at each suggestion's strengths and weaknesses.


More research needed? Here are some ideas

If there are gaps in everyone's knowledge after researching the issue or problem that needs to be cleared up you could brainstorm what the next step should be. For example, if you were setting up a recycling campaign in your community and no one was sure what current local recycling facilities were capable of and what current recycling rates as a percentage of total rubbish in the community were; you could decide as a group to write to your local public authority and ask if the action club can be taken on a tour of the recycling facilities. You could also ask for someone to come and talk with the members and answer questions like 'How much of their rubbish on average does the community already recycle?' 'How much room for improvement is there' and 'How could the action club help best'.

Some ideas could include:

	Contacting other people who are concerned with the issue or problem
	Deciding which people, groups, schools, companies, organisations and authorities should be contacted and how. This could include contacting other children and action clubs
	Inviting people with expertise in your issue or problem to come and speak to the action club
	Conducting surveys and interviews to learn how the issue affects people and how they feel about it
	Writing letters, emailing and phoning people who will likely have information you need
	Organise on-site tours and visits (Taking photographs or video footage can be useful)

Finishing up the meeting

Another step could be to ask members to brainstorm a name for the action club if it doesn't have a name already and put the results to a show of hands.

Similarly, now would be a good time to handout copies of the phone tree you made earlier to each of the members so they can know who to phone if the phone tree is needed to pass an emergency message.

Finally the facilitator should confirm the place and time of the next meeting. It is always good to allow time after meetings for people to socialise with each other. Sometimes putting on food and drinks can help with this. Friendship is vital to the unity of the action club.

Resources:

	Action club meeting agenda form: (In PDF) (In Microsoft Word)
	A good checklist for conducting good meetings can be found using this link
	A guide to effective brainstorming can be found using this link