Lisa
Tjelta
1st Pemberton Sparks
Pemberton, British
Columbia, Canada
tjelta@whistlerweb.com
Since I first became involved
with Sparks a main goal has been to recruit
many new leaders and boost
the unit to an all-time high. (Great
aspirations!) We've
tried many ways to recruit leaders. We found that
letters, posters, newsletter,
etc usually come up with nothing. The most
success we had was our
Valentines Day tea. We had the Sparks make beautiful
Valentines cards for Mom
(this can be adopted to fit any theme), and we had
preprinted little paper
inserts to have the children glue in. The inserts
invited all Moms, grandma's,
aunties, etc to attend the following meeting
for a special tea. That
was it.
Then, we baked like crazy
and had juice and ice tea to serve. There were
chairs and tables set
up. When everyone arrived (at least one woman
representing every single one
of our 25 Sparks, surprise surprise) the
ladies were seated by the
Sparks. Then the Sparks served "tea" and goodies
with plates, cups, napkins,
etc. Then the Sparks went into another room and
played games while the
majority of the leaders chatted with the Moms, etc.
We even had Coshana, our
District Commissioner attend which was wonderful.
There were posters on the
wall about Guiding, and a whole table set up with
displays of each level,
Sparks, Brownies, Guides and Pathfinders. All the
manuals were there with
pamphlets, photos, etc, basically everything we
could come up with. :~)
We chatted about Guiding
in general and then started in with talk of next
year. (We called the
whole project "Sneak and Pounce", which Coshana got a
total kick out of. She
just laughs...) Anyways, we ended up handing out
forms for eight new recruits
for next September. We also spoke to the
trainers in our area about
having the first part of a Stage 1 trainging held
BEFORE the end of this year
(instead of Fall like usual), to get these women
involved now so they have a
chance to begin networking and getting into it.
This is definitely something
we will host annually from now on.
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