Reaching Out to New Communities

Date/time:Saturday 8 February, 1-3pm

Prepared by:Carly Walker-Dawson

Objectives

  • Share case studies and good practice on reaching out to new communities
  • Facilitate a discussion about how groups can reach out to new communities
  • Get leaders to reflect on their own groups within Woodcraft
  • Feed into the IFM-SEI consultation on inclusion
  • Come up with a strategy of getting the wider movement to reach out to new communities

Time schedule

Time / Duration / Task / Facilitator(s) / Material needed
1pm / 10 minutes / Energiser – sharks and seaweed / CWD / None
1.20pm / 20 minutes / Draw your group / CWD / A3 paper
Felt tips
Coloured pencils
Masking tape
1.35pm / 15 minutes / What is a community? / CWD / Flipchart paper
Markers
1.55pm / 20 minutes / Reaching out – case studies / CWD / Case study cards
Flipchart
Markers
Coloured cards
2.15pm / 15 minutes / Brainstorming ideas / CWD / Flipchart
Markers
Coloured cards
2.20pm / 5 minutes / Prioritising – sticky dots / CWD / Sticky dots
Masking tape
2.25pm / 25 minutes / Action planning / CWD / Pens
Paper
2.50pm / 10 minutes / IFM consultation / CWD / Laptops/ smart phones

Room

Flipchart stand or room where can stick paper to walls. Enough chairs for group.

Preparation

  • Print and laminate case study cards
  • Prepare quote

Materials

  • A3 paper
  • Felt tips
  • Coloured pencils
  • Masking tape
  • Flipchart paper
  • Markers
  • Case study cards
  • Coloured cards
  • Sticky dots
  • Pens
  • Paper
  • Laptops//smart phones

Step-by-step instructions

1. Energiser(10 mins)

Sharks and seaweed.

2.Draw your group(20 minutes)

Split the group into pairs and give each person five minutes to describe their Woodcraft group (or if they don’t run a group, their old group or a group in Woodcraft) to their partner, while the partner draws their group on A3 paper. After ten minutes, ask the pairs to think which communities are reached in their drawings – give them five minutes. After the groups are finished, get everyone to come together and feedback to the group. Get the group to stick up their drawings on the wall.

3. What is a community?(15 minutes)

Prepare a piece of flipchart with the definition of a community: ‘An organised political, municipal, or social body; a body of people living in the same locality; a body of people having religion, profession, etc., in common; a body of nations with common interests’ (OED). Ask the group to brainstorm what the word community means to them – note down all comments on a flipchart. Once the discussion has tailed off, show them the definition and ask them what is similar/ different about the two definitions. Ask them what these definitions means when we’re thinking about reaching out to new communities.

4. Reaching out – case studies (20 minutes)

Prepare the case study cards (below). Split the group into three and give each of them two case studies about reaching out to new communities. Ask them to discuss the case study in their groups, asking them what works well and what doesn’t work so well in reaching out to new communities in their example and what could be done to improve it. Get each group to plan a short play of one of the case studies to show to the rest of the group. After 10 get the groups to come back together, present their plays and discuss their two examples. As they discuss their case studies, write down the possible ideas of reaching new communities on coloured cards and stick on a flipchart.

5. Brainstorming ideas (15 minutes)

Leading on from the previous discussion, get the group to brainstorm any other ideas they have about how to reach out to new communities on coloured cards.

6. Prioritising – sticky dots(5 minutes)

Give each member of the group three sticky dots and they have to mark the ideas for reaching out to new communities that they feel are most useful and relevant to Woodcraft. Tell them they can spread out their dots across different ideas or group them together. Take the three/four most popular ideas and stick them up around the room.

7. Action planning(25 minutes)

Tell the groups that they will spend the next part of the session action planning an action plan for one of the ideas that the group has prioritised – they must come up with a strategy of getting the wider movement to reach out to new communities through that idea. Say to the group they should go to the part of the room with the idea that they’d most like to work on and form a group (if any cards are left without anyone this is fine).

3. IFM consultation(10 minutes)

Encourage people to bring laptops/smart phones to the session and ask them to complete either alone or in groups the IFM inclusion survey:

Case Studies

We applied to Awards for All for a one year project with a project worker working one day a week. The project worker arranged six PlayOut days in local parks over the summer holidays with lots of crafts, games and activities in a new area. These families were then invited to open days which focused more on what a new group would look like and where it would be, as well as signing up children. The group now has 16 children currently attending and the aim now is for the project worker to pull back from the group.
We set up a new Elfin group in a school next to two big and quite deprived estates with the specific aim of increasing inclusion and diversity. Although the group is now a big, successful and vibrant group it very rapidly filled up without the ethnic diversity seen in the estates.
We are running a project on the biggest estate in the area where we are working with the Tenants and Residents Association, who have offered us a hall virtually free of charge, and we are developing links with the existing youth club. We also ran a successful PlayOut scheme over the summer but are finding it difficult to transform this into a stable group.
We used a strong district base to set up a new set of groups in a more deprived neighbouring area. We use experienced leaders from the district to set up the new groups, who act as mentors for new leaders from the community and eventually the plan is for the new leaders to take ownership over the group and take the lead as the main leader.
We actively recruited leaders from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds to help out with our groups and induct them into leadership roles. Over time, we have seen an increase in young people joining the groups from black and ethnic minority backgrounds as they have someone to identify with. A big part of recruiting and sustaining our leaders is having leader recognition, for example all of the group leaders are treated to dinner after group nights each week.
Weattend community events in ourlocal area. We use the term ‘diversity event’ to describe this type of outreach work, which covers the whole range of options and it is aimed at groups that may not have been traditionally represented in our groups. Some examples of diversity events we have attended so far are the Autism Show in London, Asian Mela festivals, gay Prides and a conference for the Islamic community.

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Reaching Out to New Communities