students. You can make sure that certain groups are adequately represented by reserving seats for them. Working groups allow to discuss various aspects in detail. The disadvantage here is that they require a large organisational effort and motivated and involved members.
How to organise small events Just do it! Organise a small event
Consultations Once you have drawn up a draft opinion, you could submit this to consultation. This process means that the proposal is available to interested people and organisations, which may submit their comments on it. The feedback is collected, analysed and used as a basis for the final version. If you want to have a consultation, you need to ask yourself who should participate. Many issues do not affect the entire student body, but perhaps only a certain age group. The advantage of a consultation is the accuracy. Some people might comment only on a small detail, while others express their views on the entire document. In this way, you can find out what the controversial points are. The main disadvantage is the long time this process takes (a few weeks, in the best case).
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aving a great organisation is fantastic, but the best way to get in touch with people and letting them share their ideas and inspiration is to bring them together at an event. Before Before you can start planning your event, you need to define what your event is about and what its goal is. Also, define your target group and how you want to promote your event. As a rough guideline, you could separate educational and entertaining events. The first are about sharing knowledge, while the latter mostly aim to be an opportunity for your members to socialise and relax. Do not think that it is forbidden to mix the two, though!
example
Come up with an aim for the event. You can organise a workshop to train new activists or have a party to improve your publicity among students and raise their awareness for both your organisation and possibly a good cause, if your event is charitable.
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A small event can be a MovieForum. You can pick a topic and timing (monthly, every other week, every six months) and then you open a poll for a movie to be chosen. Movies should be for sure related to the topic. For example if you want to organise a MovieForum on the topic of racism you can open a poll where you put film description and trailers of films like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, “Hairspray”, “La haine” and “Gran Torino”. You can organise the small event in the school or in a place outside of the school like a Youth Centre in your city. You can invite the whole student community and other young people, organise a small refreshment and play the movie. The crucial part is that after the movie you should open the floor for the discussion on the topic, link it to your actions and maybe involve some external actors who have experience on the topic you discuss. For example on racism you can invite organisations that work on anti-racism on your local level, institutional actors and tell the stories of the best practices on the topic. This can also be an opportunity for you to practice topic-wise involvement.