Talk with Dave Stewart from PEI about Elderberries - them starting their own
- Social Activities
- We usually meet • once a month, all year 'round • usually in Halifax • usually on the afternoon of the second Sunday of the month, for fellowship including a pot luck meal. But there are lots of exceptions. Get on our mailing list (below) for the particulars. All events are potlucks, so get out your recipes! Also we often have one more activity at some random time during the month.
- Education
- Our social events often include an educational topic relating to some element of LGBT elder life.
- Public Speaking: We have a Speaker's Bureau: people ready to talk at a moment's notice - very long term. which can provide informed and witty speakers who have been out and proud for decades, for media and other engagements.
- If there's a queer elders event in the media, we get an email and will supply someone to speak. You say yes right away and then find out how many people they want, and when. Realistically that'll be you, Dave.
- We appear at high school Gay Straight Alliance meetings around the province each year as a liaison between elders and high school students
- Activism We lobby various levels of government on a variety of LGBT & elders issues, write angry letters.
Having the four mandates means we can do almost anything we feel like. We often participate in research
What works
Events and venues that cost us NOTHING. I feel like this is important.
Some people bitch about the pot luck part. And they bitch about everything else too - everything you do, and everything you don't do. So the idea of having events that are driven by boardmembers' interests is IMO the most practical.
Also you will find lots of people who will volunteer to "help" but not volunteer to actually run events.
We do not have a shortage of ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. We have a shortage of people and their energy to "realize" ideas - that is, make them real. So if someone is keen to lead something, we say, "Hell yeah! What do you need?
We put out a collection box at each event and collect on average something like four bucks per person.
We meet every couple months but we do a LOT of work by email. Getting elders to use something like Discord or even a facebook chat is difficult.
- I think the extremely regular event and venue is helpful - people mostly do not mark their calendars but they could. It's helpful to us the Board so we don't spend much time talking
- Literary events work bizarrely well
- The Speakers Bureau members REALLY like the high school speaking engagements. We are just now rebuilding our relationship with high schools after covid.
- I think it's important to have a chair or secretary who can respond to things in hours - not things that have to wait for a board meeting three weeks -- or in the summer, 9 weeks, away. So the decisionmaking hast to be a bit informal.
- July: Pride; August & September: PIcnics; December: Some special Christmas thing - I cooked a turkey one year.
- I really liked the "No Talent Know Talent" show in February. We'll do that again.
What doesn't work
Two standard society things:
- out of perhaps ... 800 members, we get the same 20 every event EXCEPT for literary events
- getting new boardmembers is work, and then filtering out ones that actually do stuff. We should have a Board bylaw that says if someone's not actively helping run the society we can replace them
- About the bitching: I handle it by cheerfully inviting the bitch-er to join the Board.
What works
- We decide on a few months of future meetings at each face to face meeting. It's not difficult - we have a huge list of things we could do - I can share it if you want.
- The format is usually someone on the board will suggest a thing and we'll say "Sure" and they'll be the lead and we will support them.
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