Running meetings with young people can seem like a daunting prospect, especially if you haven’t done it before. It's really not that bad, and hopefully you may find that you actually really enjoy it! This guide gives you step by step advice on what you need to know to help you run successful meetings with young people. Each section has a quick guide so you can check you’ve done everything you need to, at a glance.

Recruiting Members

You’re going to need people to come to the meeting, but first of all you need to decide which age range you’re targeting.

Once you’ve decided this, you’ll need to advertise. You can use posters, fliers, leaflets and so on, but they often don’t get read so you’ll need to make them as eye-catching as possible (lots of colours, and pictures often help). If possible, you could get some children or young people to design the advertising materials to make sure that its relevant to the age group you’re targeting.

Word of mouth is a great way of letting people know about your meeting and what you want to do. Visit existing children and young people groups and spread the word about what you’re doing. If you can get a couple of people interested they can help you by talking the their friends and persuading them to come along as well. If you do decide to visit existing groups, you need to make sure that you’re not excluding children and young people who don’t attend those groups. Diversity and having a representative group is very important, so try to target groups that represent all sections of the community.

Once you’ve let children and young people know about the meetings, it might be a good idea to send them a reminder close to the date. You can do this as a flier in the post, or by doing a quick phone around the day before the meeting. However, if all the children and young people have mobile phones, you could send a text message to remind them.

• Decide on target age range
• Produce publicity materials (involve children and young people in design if possible)
• Remember – word of mouth works well – talk to children and young people about the meetings
• Make use of existing groups, but remember diversity.
• Reminders – use text messaging

There are a few things that you have to do if you want to organise meetings with children and young people. You need to make sure that you know what your responsibilities are with regards to issues like Health & Safety, Child protection etc. Check out your organisation’s child protection procedures and the Practicalities section of Save the Children’s Cdrom for guidance on child protection.

Health and safety is the other main area where you need to ‘know your stuff’. Before holding meetings with children and young people you need to make sure your organisation has insurance to cover the meetings. You will also need to do a risk assessment. There is lots of information and advice about health and safety in the Practicalities section of Save the Children’s cdrom.

It’s also a good idea to make sure you have procedures in place just in case anything does go wrong. Write down a list of actions that need to be taken if something did go wrong and make sure that all the staff are aware of these procedures. For example it's crucial everyone is aware of whet to do in the event of a fire.

Check that you’ve got enough staffing for your meeting. This will depdend on the ages of the participants and also whether anyone has specific support needs that another adult might help with. Good practice for outings or activities is one staff member or volunteer to 5 children or young people.

Finally, if the children and young people are under 18 years of age, you should get consent from their parents for them to take part in things. A template consent form is included in the Practicalities section of Save the Children’s Cdrom, which you can use or adapt to your needs. Send these out before the first meeting and make sure you have a completed form for each child and young person before they attend any meetings.

• Child protection – find out your responsibilities
• Check your organisation’s insurance
• Do a risk assessment
• Prepare emergency procedures
• Sort out staffing
• Get consent

You’ll need to decide when and where to hold your meeting. It’s a good idea to check with the children and young people you want to attend, when is the best time for them. You don’t want to organise your meeting and have only one person turn up because the rest are at football practice! So, check with them about what is the best day and time for them.

Also, check with the children and young people about which venue is best to use. Make sure you book one which is easily accessible. Make sure its not too far away, that it has disabled access, and that its suitable for your needs (if you’re planning lots of games you’ll need a big sized room).

The key to preparing for a meeting with children and young people is to have a plan and to have a back up plan! Things often don’t go quite as you expect so it’s a good idea to have a plan b just in case. To make sure your meetings will be interesting and relevant to the target group involve children and young people in all planning. This might be difficult for the first meeting, but you should definitely involve them in planning for subsequent meetings.

Make an agenda for the meeting, so you know exactly what you want to achieve. Ask the children and young people if there is anything they want to add to the agenda.

Once you’ve got your plans, brief any other staff or volunteers who will be helping you during the meeting. Make sure they know what you need them to do during the meeting.

• Decide date and time (consult with children and young people)
• Book venue (check accessibility and suitability)
• Have a plan
• Have a back up plan!
• Involve children and young people in planning
• Make an agenda
• Brief staff/volunteers

At the start of the meeting, you should introduce yourself, and welcome everyone to the meeting. Try and put everyone at ease and create a relaxed atmosphere. The seating arrangements and things like refreshments can all help to contribute to this. It’s a good idea at this point to make sure that everyone knows where the fire exits and toilets are.

Make sure everyone knows each others names. It’s a good idea to set groundrules or a meeting contract, so that everyone agrees on what should and shouldn’t happen during the meeting and also that young people feel safe. It is essential to involve the children and young people in coming up with the groundrules/meeting contract. Ask them to call out suggestions and write them up on flip chart paper. If you think there are any missing you can also make suggestions. If you want to you can get everyone to sign the bottom of the flip chart to show they agree with what’s written on it. If you do this, make sure you and any other staff and volunteers sign it as well.

You may find it useful to write up your agenda on flip chart paper so everyone can see it. Use big and colourful writing, and you can draw pictures if you want to! Make sure you explain to the group at the beginning of the meeting, what the purpose of the meeting is and what is planned for the meeting.

When you’re running the meeting be flexible, things often don’t go exactly to plan. Its important to make sure everyone is comfortable, interested and enjoying themselves. If you need to change your plan/agenda a bit to achieve this, do so. Be confident when speaking to the group and enjoy yourself. If you’re having a good time, the meeting attendees are much more likely to enjoy themselves too.

Involve children and young people in the running of the meeting. Encourage them to run discussions or activities. Some groups of children and young people will want formal meetings, while others will prefer more informal fun meetings, so its important to involve them so you get the approach right. If you don’t get it right, they might not come again.

During the meeting make sure that you have some breaks. It’s a good idea to get the group to decide how many breaks they want and when they want them while you’re doing the groundrules/meeting contract. Also, have some refreshments, but make sure you check with the children and young people beforehand what they like. You don’t want to turn up with lots of doughnuts only to find out nobody likes them (unlikely, but best to check!)

It's very useful to make a list of who’s attending. This way you have a record of attendees. Depending on the venue you might also be required to do this for health and safety reasons. If there was a fire, you would also be able to check that everyone was out of the building.

Running a Meeting: Quick Guide

• Make sure people know location of fire escapes, toilets and so on
• Set groundrules or a meeting contract with the group
• Write the agenda up on flip chart paper
• Be flexible, confident and enjoy yourself!
• Involve children and young people in running the meeting
• Have some breaks
• Check with children and young people about what refreshments they want
• Make a list of who attended

Its important to do regular evaluations so that you can check that you’re meeting your targets and achieving what you set out to achieve. It will also allow you to find out if the meetings are going the way the children and young people want. You will be able to use the evaluation findings in reports to funders as well.

Involve children and young people in any evaluation you are doing. Tailor the evaluation to what the group enjoys. For example, if they like interactive meetings, do fun evaluation games and activities. However, if they prefer more formal meetings, you could hold an evaluation focus group discussion.

Make sure that you follow up any suggestions for improvements that the children and young people make. Encourage an open and honest atmosphere in the meetings, so people feel comfortable to make suggestions about how things could be improved.

If it’s not possible to do something, make sure that you explain why to the children and young people.

• Evaluate regularly
• Involve children and young people
• Tailor the evaluation to the needs of the group
• Follow up suggestions for improvement
• Encourage open atmosphere in meetings, so people feel comfortable to make suggestions
• If something can’t be changed explain why not

Some groups enjoy doing games during meetings either as ice-breakers at the beginning or energisers during meetings. Find out from your group whether they want games included in their meetings. If they say yes, here are some you can use:

Name and Information Games

One way of adapting this game to make it a bit more exciting is to have everyone sitting on chairs in a circle. The person in the middle shouts out a command, and everyone who it applies to moves to another chair. The person in the middle has to try and find a chair to sit on. Whoever is left without a chair has to shout out the next command.

Everyone has to stand in a line in alphabetical order of the first letter of their first name. If everyone knows each other’s names you can do the first letter of people’s middle name, or in order of their birthday. To make the game more interesting you can make people do it without speaking. When they have finished go along the line shouting the alphabet and get people to do a mexican wave when their letter is shouted. This will allow you to check that people are standing in the right order. If you have done birthdays, shout the months of the year instead.

Everyone stands in a circle except one person who stands in the middle. The person in the middle is a zombie. They walk with the arms stretched out in front of them in the style of a zombie. When they start walking towards someone that person has to shout out another person’s name, the zombie then starts walking towards that person. If someone doesn’t shout another person’s name and the zombie gets to them and taps them on the shoulder they become a zombie too. You can start with more than one zombie to make it more interesting.

Get into groups of five or more and stand in a tight circle. Everyone closes their eyes, puts their hands into the middle of the circle and grabs hold of someone else’s hand in each hand. When everyone is holding hands open your eyes. The group then has to try and untangle themselves from the knot they are in into a circle. The first group to do so is the winner.

Get into pairs. The person leading the game shouts a command such as knee to elbow, the pairs then have to perform these commands. In this instance one person has to touch their elbow to the other person’s knee. If the leader shouts person to person you have to change partners.

Get into groups of three. Decide in the group, one person to be the sculptor, one to be the model and one to be the clay. The sculptor has to close their eyes and keep them closed for the duration of the game. The model then makes him/herself into a shape. The sculptor (keeping their eyes closed) has to feel the shape the model has made and then move the clay into this shape. The clay should not move any part of their body unless the sculptor moves it for them. The game finishes when the sculptor thinks s/he has sculpted the clay into the same shape as the model. S/he can then open their eyes and compare the clay to the model.

Smelly sock

Everyone sits in a tight circle on the floor with their legs in front of them bent at the knees. One person is outside the circle and is looking for their ‘smelly sock’! A sock is passed under the knees of people in the circle. The person outside the circle has to try and guess who has the sock, while the people in the circle have to pass the sock around without the other person guessing correctly.

Get into groups of four, three of the people stand in a triangle and hold hands, the fourth person is ‘on it’. The three people in the triangle have to choose one person, which the person who is ‘on it’ has to try and tag. The other two protect this person by moving the triangle from side to side. The person who is ‘on it’ can only go around the outside of the triangle. When the person ‘on it’ tags the chosen person everyone changes roles.

Everyone sits on the floor in a circle. The person leading the game shouts the commands “on the bank” or “in the pond”. When they shout “on the bank” everyone has to put their hands on their knees, when they shout “in the pond” everyone has to put their hands on the floor. At the start there is one judge who watches to make sure everyone is doing the right action. If people do the wrong action they become judges. To begin with the person leading the game does the action of the command they are shouting. To make it more interesting the person leading the game can say “do what I say, not what I do”. They can then do different actions to what they are saying, and try and catch people out!

Two people in the group are vampires. Everyone (including the vampires) walks around the room with their eyes closed (it is a good idea to have some people stood around the edges of the room with their eyes open making sure people don’t walk into anything). If a vampire ‘gets you’ (squeezes your shoulders) you scream and then you become a vampire as well and you have to find other people to make into vampires. If you are already a vampire and you have your shoulders squeezed by another vampire you do a big sigh and you stop being a vampire.

Get into pairs. In your pairs each person has to think of a kitchen utensil. Once you both have thought of one, you have to have an argument using only that word. In other words, if you have chosen microwave you can only say the word microwave during your argument.

Get into pairs. In your pairs each person puts one arm behind their back, the other arm is stretched out in front of them with one finger pointing at the other person. The aim of the game is to try and touch the other person’s elbow (on the arm behind their back) with your outstretched finger. You have to remember to protect your own elbow by moving around while at the same time trying to touch the other person’s elbow. The first to win three games is the champion!