Putting a Warm Welcome into practice for organisers

Providing a Warm Welcome – support for Volunteer Managers and Network Leaders

This Train the Trainer-style session will introduce you to a toolkit and notes which will give you the confidence and materials to help you, your group members and group leaders to develop the way a group runs, ensuring it is open and welcoming to new members.

Any process of change will probably work best if you make those changes together rather than just telling people that from now on “things will be better run round here”.

The toolkit will take you from welcoming people through the door and looking after the group dynamics during the session, to keeping in touch with people outside the group.

We’ll cover:

• Welcoming people into a space
• Holding the space
• Keeping a friendly group running
  

The session will provide practical information for you to share, using a tutor script, slides and handouts. The learning has been gathered from Ageing Better projects who worked with older people (50+) over 7 years, to find out what worked best for them. It focuses on things you can do to offer a good experience to those who might have become chronically lonely, or who struggle to access social activities because of physical disabilities or memory problems. The good thing is that most of these things mean everyone will have a good experience.

You will then be able to work as a group to work out how to implement the Warm Welcome.