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This was followed by a number of presentations under the title "Secrets of Success", where group members shared their experience of what works.
Jim Herrick/Alec Leggatt (Farnham ) explained how their group had its profile had benefited from organising public meetings with high profile speakers. They wanted to move away from "Armchair Humanism" where the group looks internally all the time discussing humanism. However they still found that social events are important for getting the members of the group to know each other better. The 2007 debate takes place on 20th November with the subject "War and Peace".
Michael Imison (Suffolk) how the Suffolk group was progressing using an excellent state of the art website.
The Suffolk Humanist group meet monthly and has over 70 members. It is affiliated to the BHA and NSS but also has affiliations
with other organisations such as the Suffolk Interfaith group. They have held "Ethical Juries" within the group to discuss and share personal moral issues.
Their newsletter is sent via email to most members, and by post to
those that prefer to receive hard copy. The email is also sent out to
other organisations including the local police.
The committee meetings make use of Phone Conferencing to avoid lots of travel.
John Hodge (North East) talked about his group which now has 232 members and holds monthly meetings. It is a registered charity and this provides a number of benefits for the group.
Publicity has played an important role in creating such a large group and includes:
- Library Posters and Leaflets
- Stalls at events
- Prolific writers to loca press
- Leaflet drops
- Ceremonies
- Facebook
New members are 'managed' and welcomed. They have lunches for new
members and partners to help them get to know people in the group and use "greeters" to ensure that new members feel welcome.
Fundraising and donation to charities also is a key activity of the
group and new members have come to the group via fundraising events.
The group offer a 'link scheme' to enable members who are less mobile
or housebound to still feel part of the group. This is were a mobile
member of the group will visit less mobile members on a regular basis.
The group has found that supporting other charities has helped to
generate interest and membership in the group, especially younger members.
Rosemary Taylorson and Jeremy Rodell (South
West London) explained how they had established a new group using advertising in the local paper, utilising telephone conferencing and the internet.
These were followed by a talk under the heading "What about the Young?". Catherine Taylor (Nottingham) gave a lively talk on how she established a university humanist group in which she made it clear that its main attraction was that it provided opposition to the increasingly assertive role of religious groups. In order to get younger people involved in Humanism, the group needs to
give them a reason to join. The opportunity for friendship and social events is
not normally sufficient as younger people already have friends and
active social lives. Campaigning and activism are most likely to encourage younger people to get involved. They want to feel they have made a difference.
This was followed by an excellent vegetarian lunch which did give rise to a brief thought amongst some that there could be a case for a Humanist Carnivore's Group to provide an alternative to the Humanist Vegetarians.
After lunch Jemma Hooper gave a talk entitled "What has the BHA ever done for us?" in which she provided details of the services the BHA provides for Local Groups. In particular the BHA now promotes groups on the membership application form and new groups have been set up where a need has been identified in a location. In addition, several special interest groups have been established - Vegetarians, Armed Forces, Greens and Science being just some.
Henry Cummins (Armed Forces
Humanists) gave a very interesting talk on Humanism and the armed forces where it is now recognised. He pointed out that if veterans are included, they are addressing a population of c. 1.5 million.
"The Web is Wonderful. How Groups can use the Web to their advantage." was the subject addressed by John Catt (Leicester) assisted by Josh Kutchinsky (Hampstead). The presentation can be viewed below.
The next subject was the Local
Development Project. Andrew Copson (BHA) explained how the Local Development project was being taken forward with volunteers so that local humanists could be involved in "community cohesion" projects at the local authority level. He emphasised that whilst the BHA had to control the exercise, since it was receiving government funding, all the volunteers had been asked to liaise closely with their local groups to ensure that there should be no conflicts.
Richard Hogg (Hampshire) then talked about the Local Leafleting Project that he has been progressing. The current objective is to distribute 17,500 on a door to door basis using 75 volunteers.
Hanne Stinson (BHA) & Danny Collman (Birmingham) then provided some closing remarks. The meeting had been convivial and positive with hopefully everyone leaving with some new ideas on how to promote Humanism locally. The meeting closed at 4pm.
