START TIME

You’ve planned a program. You want to start on time. What does that mean?

Is the start time a time on the clock? Is it when people are ready to come?  When their friends also show up? When the program has started?

In many places where relationships and community are more important than calendars and clocks , the real time to start is when the community, when the people involved, have gathered. What triggered them to gather? Usually not a set time on the clock.

For instance, we know of situations where people gathered when they saw a light on in the meeting building; when the leader’s car stood in front of the building; when the boring part of the program was over; when they themselves were finished with other things.

What we, as clock and calendar people, have learned from this is:

• start with something fun
• give a signal people can see (light is on; car is in front of the building, flag hangs out in front again . . .)
• give a signal people can hear (ring a bell, set up a sort relay race through the community with a horn or other noise-maker, everyone who is already gathered shouts as hard as they can . . .)
• physically gather the people yourself (make a chain of people; give everyone in the chain a hat)
• give a reward to everyone who was there the whole time.
• learn the local rhythm of life and choose a time when people are likely or able to come.                                                                                                               

And the last but most important tip:  relax and repeat. Repeat the core content of the program several times and in several different ways, perhaps with a game or an activity. In this way, if one chance to share an important point is missed, you know that other chances are still coming up. 

 

Photo: Grzegorz W. Tężycki, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons