In our area school starts really early, August 8th to be exact. This means that leaders start getting text messages right away saying, “When is club?!?” If we were to start club in the beginning of August we would run out of momentum, interest, and energy for club way before the end of the semester.
Our strategy for the beginning of the year is to have about six weeks of easy hang out events that are mostly contact work related. Then we have an all area dodgeball tournament the Monday after our annual Fall Leader Retreat, with traditional club starting the following week. This allows us to focus our energy on relationships and not events. It also allows us to gauge our numbers for club, campaigners, getting new leaders in place, and more. We do start up campaigners before club, Aug 29th.
For this year, here are our plans for the next few Mondays…
Aug 12 – Volleyball at the local sports/fun park (costs us $5 for all of us to use a court)
Aug 19 – Nerd Bowling ($10 per person)
Aug 26 – Swim Party
Sept 2 – Labor Day – No Event
Sept 9 – All You Can Eat $3 Taco Bell Night
Sept 16 – All Area Dodgeball
Sept 23 – First traditional club
Here is a template we are using to plan our year if you need one…
What do you do to get YL going each year?
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