Sunday 27 May 2007

how about this as an idea

In response to Lorna and Simon's ideas which are certainly worth pondering - I'll throw another one in.

This one is really simple - you just invite people to whatever you had already planned to do.

Here's an example of how it would work. I let everyone and anyone I can think of that me and my children are going for a picnic in a local park and to invite them to join us and bring their own lunch. That's it - the beauty of this is if thousands turn up to the picnic we have a great time and if no one turns up we still have a great time.

This idea could work for lots of outings and events where you don't have to pre-book and numbers don't matter, so for example I could tell people I'm going to the Tate Modern, or the cinema, or Adventure Kingdom or swimming or Godstone Farm etc. All you need is to let people know what you were doing anyway and invite them along.

At my children's school we do this a lot, we meet up in the local park on the way home and the kids play football for half an hour or so and it works well. It is great for getting to know people and all you have to do is let people know and be there...

5 comments:

Lorna said...

I like this idea both for its simplicity and its spontaneity.

Something I've been trying to get my head around for some time is how to have more contact with our 'care group', which includes several families with young children. Perhaps this is something that would work.

Liz, make the most of those gatherings in the park. It gets more difficult to have those sorts of opportunities as the children grow up and the mums go back to paid work...

Liz said...

Thank you Lorna, for your kind and wise words.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Mike said...

Not sure who Rodrigo is, but he seems to be posting in Portuguese. For anyone interested in his post a (very) approximate translation is as follows:

"Oi, I found yours blog for google tá well interesting I liked this post. When to give gives passed for mine blog, is on personalized t-shirts, shows step by step as to create a well personalized t-shirt way. Until more."

Courtesy of a web translation site, perhaps Betty Cooke can give a better idea of the content, as my Portuguese is largely confined to (very happy) football coach names!

Anthony said...

I'm liking this train of thought. A good idea I heard a few years back was to ask people to help you! It may seem a bit odd, but often people (well some peope!) are more willing to help you than receive something from you.

So folks that would never come to a freebie might happily help you put your shed up, mend your computer or give you a hand in the garden. Obviously there are limits to this but it can be a great way of initiating deeper contact and opens the door to return the favour...