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Muslim action against Poverty
How To ...Set Up A Local Group
The Idea
The TFI ‘Campaign for the Poor’ is led by TFI in coalition with other local, national and international organisations. Local groups form the backbone of our campaigning across the country. They play a critical role in raising public awareness, lobbying MPs and government, and generally keeping global poverty issues alive. You can set up a group with any number of members or can even register an existing group, for example a local TFI group, as a member of the coalition and campaign on global poverty issues along-side your other work.
Getting Started
The first thing that those of you who have decided to form the group should do is get together and decide if you want to recruit other group members from the local area. Other people or groups to contact might include schools, religious places, councillors, and other local campaigning groups working on the same issues, for example WDM, MGR, MWF. You can invite all these people or groups to join you at an inaugural meeting where they could decide whether to become regular members, and you can discuss how best to work together on global poverty issues.
Your First Meeting
People are of course more likely to attend your first meeting if you are able to offer an interesting speaker. Invite a speaker, from the local area if possible, to give a short introduction to the poverty issues and the TFI Campaign for the Poor. By including examples of the successes of global poverty campaigning and how it makes a difference, they can inspire people to participate in your group.
Make sure that your meeting venue is made attractive and interesting using posters, pictures and literature available from the TFI secretariat. You might also like to produce your own posters locally.
Initial Action
It is helpful if you give attendees the opportunity to take action right from this very first meeting. Have a simple action available on the night, for example action card signing or letter writing. Following on from this, you can break up into small groups and brainstorm ideas for future actions. Come back together to discuss the ideas from each group and ask attendees to sign up to working groups who will take each action forward. For example, you might have an individual or group keen to lobby your MP and another keen to work on publicising poverty issues in local schools. These people can then report back on their activity at your next meeting.
Campaigning Ideas
Here are a few ideas for campaigning activities your group can take on :-
• Distributing action postcards and gathering petition signatures
• Watching films on global poverty issues - or arranging public screenings
• Lobbying MPs
• Raising awareness through schools, colleges and universities
• Writing letters
• Organising speaker meetings and debates
• Running stalls at local fairs and events
• Getting local media attention through press releases, stunts or vigils
• Publicising national events - conferences or demonstrations - in your area
Have Fun!
Don’t forget to have fun at your meetings. The life and friendship of the group, and the energy this creates, is a very important ingredient that will keep it active. Members should look forward to coming to your meetings because they are creative and interesting. Include placard and poster making sessions, encourage people to demonstrate global poverty issues games or activities that they’ve run with youth audiences, watch videos and generally try to vary the content of your meetings.
Useful Tips
Try to decide on a date for the next meeting at the end of your first and repeat this at each subsequent meeting. This will ensure that people get the date in their diaries and have opportunity to raise objections to any date.
Make sure you have plenty of materials for people to take away with them and use in their own work. This will save each individual member contacting the secretariat for resources.
Have a sign up sheet available and ask everybody at the meeting to put down their name and contact details. This will allow you to keep them up to date with activity and remind them about the next meeting. Try not to let one person dominate the meeting. It is important to have a strong chair who can move discussion on and ensure everybody has a say.
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