Any ideas please ???

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sweetsatin

sweetsatin

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Sadly my Local monthly diabetic group are closing their monthly meetings, we will be dweedling out & gone by dec this year due to lack of funds & interest.
I am the youngest there and have been asked to come up with ideas on keeping us all going.
We had a speaker each month from various proffesions all connected to diabetes.
What i am asking is if you had a local group in your area and wanted to attract the younger generation as well as us older ones, what would you like to see?.

Personaly i don't think we advertise enough and bringing the awareness of diabetes to the community.
Have you any fund raising ideas.

I have offered my greeting cards for sale and all funds to go to the group
but i feel i'm flogging a dead horse here.

I want to make people more aware of diabetes with posters and things, even if it means getting a stall once or twice a week & handing out leaflets ect.
I have wrote to diabetes uk offering my cards & services but never get any reply, this makes me so angry all i want to do is help people. Grrrrrr.

There is nothing on the Isle of wight apart from my monthly group meeting.
any advice and ideas would be welcomed.
 
It does seem to be a problem - I'm always reading about these groups folding through lack of interest or broad appeal. They recently restarted the Southampton group (last September). I asked to be kept informed but haven't heard a peep since.

DUK doesn't seem to join these groups up very well - they seem to be very automonous, doing their own thing, rather than sharing ideas and experiences which they could do if DUK supported webpages for them or something. Giving things a more up to date feel might encourage younger ones, and definitely more advertising so that people are well aware in advance of things so they can plan. There ought to be something like 'twinning' so groups could swap ideas.

I'll have a think! 🙂
 
I have never attended a diabetes meet before. What happens at a meet?
Is it possible to have a coffee morning meet and charge a minimal sum for coffee and biscuits, :confused:maybe not biscuits 😛
Maybe meet at a local community hall or the local library. Does your local health centre have a meeting hall? Town hall?
You could also hand out leaflets to anyone interested at your local car boot sale. Or maybe do a leaflet drop in the area.
 
I've just taken over chairmanship of a similar relatively recently formed group in my home town of Wath-upon-Dearne in South Yorkshire - I also attend a fairly successful and longer-established group in the neighbouring town of Rotherham. A similar group that did operate in Barnsley did have problems with membership and is no longer active.

My plan is to promote self-help discussion between members and that seems to be being well received so far. Also, members seem keen on things such as outings. Meetings for short walks might be something else that can be used - e.g. 'A walk in the park' or something similar.

Advertising is important in my opinion and I intend using the local newspapers (including the free ones) to advertise meetings and publicise the fact that there is such a group - also flyers for posting up in the hospital diabetes centres, local GP surgeries, libraries, community halls, churches etc. Also, eventually, we intend to circulate short newsletters for distribution to members etc.

Personally, I'd be less worried about fund raising because the costs of running a group need only be quite small and what's the point in piling up funds in the bank. The group that I am involved with has already received financial help from organisations such as the local council and from other areas too. Both of the groups that I attend have a ?1 membership fee paid at each meeting attended and also run small raffles at the meetings - this more than covers the cost of the meetings - i.e. room hire and refreshments etc.

If there is anyone who might be interested in the activities of groups in this particular area of South Yorkshire then they would be made very welcome. I'd certainly be very interested to hear from them.
 
More advertising. Perhaps have a disco or dance connected with some of the meetings? Is anyone willing to organise outings, or trips to interesting places?
 
Thank you all for your input & taking the time to read this.
There has only been 15 or less people at the meeting, i have been to 6 meets so far, we meet up in the local british red cross, there is no entrance fees only a small raffle but not allowed to have them really for some unknown reason so all used tickets are collected at the end & thrown away outside the building.
Our meettings just had a speaker & a quick 5 min questions at the end.
The speakers are great & very interesting no problem there.
The group itself don't really scream out and say i can't wait to go again.
I have tried talking to people at the end but noone wants to chat they just want to lock up and go home.
They did have a quarterly news letter that has now stoped.
 
Some groups are just such hard work. I used to run a Meet A Mum Assoiciation group. It was me who organised all the meetings, me who organised all the fundraising, me who organised all the trips and me who wrote the monthly newsletter. Once everyone had left the meeting with their children they didn't want to know each other. No one wanted to help. In the end I gave it up and handed the funds to head office for other groups benefit and I moved on to other things.
 
I think Wally has come up with some really good ideas. If you google diabetes groups in your area, does your group show up? If someone newly diagnosed is looking for a local group, are you easy to find? Thinking about younger people, I suspect the internet would be one of the first places they would look.
 
MargB said:
I think Wally has come up with some really good ideas. If you google diabetes groups in your area, does your group show up? If someone newly diagnosed is looking for a local group, are you easy to find? Thinking about younger people, I suspect the internet would be one of the first places they would look.
Click to expand...

I think this is where DUK could improve their offerings. Their website will tell you if there is a group in your area (by postcode), but then the contact is usually a telephone number - younger people would just rather click through to a website and find out what the group is offering than phone up. I'm not young, but would prefer this as it is easier to get a 'flavour' than in a phone call, plus, you're already there on the web when you've found the group!

Perhaps setting up site using something like blogger or wordpress would be a good idea - it's very easy to do and doesn't require any programming knowledge.
 
Northerner said:
I think this is where DUK could improve their offerings. Their website will tell you if there is a group in your area (by postcode), but then the contact is usually a telephone number - younger people would just rather click through to a website and find out what the group is offering than phone up. I'm not young, but would prefer this as it is easier to get a 'flavour' than in a phone call, plus, you're already there on the web when you've found the group!

Perhaps setting up site using something like blogger or wordpress would be a good idea - it's very easy to do and doesn't require any programming knowledge.
Click to expand...
A few of the DUK groups have their own mini-website that shows up when you do the DUK search for a local group. As I understand things at present help may be available from DUK in setting up a group's own website. It's something that I'm intending exploring for the Wath-upon-Dearne Family Support Group but I don't have the answers as to how it all works yet.
 
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