ALDC Development Officer Hannah Perkin gives a great example of a recent Campaign Event for volunteers she recently attending in Chichester.
Early in the year I was invited to attend a Campaign event in Chichester hosted by the campaign manager, former and current PPCs and some of the core team there. They had put on the event to encourage new and established volunteers to get stuck in with the Parliamentary campaign. Whilst there I chatted with a few of the people that hard come along, one was new and this was her first meeting, one had been a councillor for 20 years, one was traditionally a Labour voter but had joined the event to help get the Tories out. A real mix of people from across the area.
The evening started with a presentation on what the team had been up to, an update on their brilliant local election results and an explanation of exactly how much work they had to do to get Jess Brown-Fuller elected as the next MP. The presentation was engaging and fun and most importantly easy to understand for any level of experience and clearly mapped out how much work has been done and how much more there was to do.
There was then an explanation about canvassing and why it was important. This was aimed at getting people to feel more comfortable with knocking on the doors of strangers and speaking to them about politics. Former PPC Kate O’Kelly and current PPC Jess took it in turns to pretend to be the canvasser and the resident picking voting intentions out of hat and then pretending to be a shy Tory or a Green party member. The attendees had to guess what they would put down on minivan and had a lot of fun discussing who the voter was and talking about their own doorstep conversations.
Everyone then stopped for soup, snacks, tea and coffee and had a chance to chat to each other and meet new people.
After refuelling it was on to blue letters. The team explained what the blue letters were and who they were going to and people that had come along were encouraged to take a bundle to address. They were all laid out with a sign in sheet. Along side this the attendees were taught how to wholesale some addresses letters, they were given connect walk maps and taught how to bundle the letters with the maps ready to go out for delivery. This meant that not only did the attendees pick up new skills and fully understand the importance of the activities but the team had bundled and wholesaled everything they needed to by the end of the evening and a lot of it had been picked up by volunteers to deliver.
The whole event was excellent , there was something for every level of experience, the team were excellent hosts and the attendees seemed enthused and ready to help by the end and most importantly everyone seemed to have a great time together whilst getting the jobs that needed to be done, done.