Being a part of an international videoconference where you and your classmates can dialogue with students from around the country and across the world about about development issues can be a very powerful experience. Hopefully this experience demonstrates the need for fair trade, maternal health, labor rights, and all other development issues globally and will motivate your friends, fellow students, faculty, and staff to join your campus campaign.
This toolkit will help you organize and facilitate a fantastic videoconference on your campus—an event featuring top expert speakers that bring together a diverse group of students, student organizations, and members of the community. Follow the clear steps; adjust pre-written scripts, invitations, e-mails and poster templates; use the publicity strategies; and HAVE FUN!
Participating is quite simple because we take care of all the technical stuff!
Step 1 – Locate and reserve your videoconferencing facility on campus.
Step 2 – Register online with AIDemocracy. Make sure you know your videoconference technician’s name, e-mail, and phone number.
Step 3 – Publicize. See below for poster templates and press outlets.
Step 4 – Prepare for the event. Make sure people can find the room and have some refreshments on hand. We’ll give you up to $50 to cover food and miscellaneous costs.
Step 5 – Participate in the videoconference!
Step 6 – Inform your peers of how they can become involved in your campus campaign.
Step 7 – Wrap up and let us know how you think it went.
Step 8 –Take further action!Curious to listen to a past videoconference? Click here.
Curious to read about a sample videoconference format? Click here.
Step 1 – Locate and reserve your videoconferencing facility on campus.
If you’re unsure of where the videoconferencing technology is located on campus, call your Tech Services or ITS. Depending on your school, you may to reserve this room through Tech Services or through the student affairs office or online. And you may discover that a student cannot solely reserve this space.
The whole can be much easier if you find a student or community group, academic department, or dean to co-sponsor the event with you.
Here is a template email for approaching co-sponsors to help secure the videoconferencing center for your event (we’ve never had students have to pay to use this space, so keep enquiring if they tell you it’ll cost $600 for example).
Step 2 – Register online with AIDemocracy.
Registering online early secures your place in the videoconference as well as a mini-grant of up to $50 (click here for a sample mini-grant budget). Make sure you know your videoconference technician’s name, e-mail, and phone number, then complete our online form at www.globalscholar.org/videoconference. We will follow-up by contacting your technicians and sending you videoconference materials including an agenda.
1) Distribute posters and flyers. Click here for a poster template.
- Don’t waste time with bulletin boards! Flyers on bulletin boards will be covered in a matter of days, if not hours. Put your flyers someplace they’ll get noticed.
- Do flyer in unorthodox places. Bathrooms, tables, the ground, building entrances, lounges, etc. are the best places to put your flyers. If it’s a strange place to put a flyer—it’s probably a good one!
- Don’t flier too far in advance. Your flyers will probably just get ripped down or covered. Try to start flyering about a week and a half in advance.
- Do flyer with all your energy the morning of your event.
- Don’t hesitate to e-mail groups or departments that seem unrelated. Reach out to new groups—Greek houses, campus ministries, student groups, and academic departments—to engage more people in global issues.
- Do stand at the entrance to your campus’s busiest dining hall or student center at lunchtime. Spend just half an hour handing out quarter sheets at the entrance and reach hundreds of students.
- Don’t forget to put flyers in the community. Use tables or bulletin boards at local shops, bookstores, music stores, and cafes.
- Do choose two large lectures to make announcements at on the day of your event. Show up ten minutes early to ask the professor if you can make a 30 second announcement before class.
- DO MAIL MERGE! Consult our guide online at http://www.aidemocracy.org/mailmerge.doc for sending personalized e-mails to your lists of contacts.
2) Submit a press releases 1 week and again 2 days before the event. Click here for a sample press release templates. If you need to fax the release, you can email Autumn with the number and we will fax it there for you. A great resource for finding press office fax numbers (and the tool that we use) is Newspapers Online. Then call to remind the press outlet of your event the days before. Click here for a sample phone script.
3) Send emails or "e-flyers" to relevant professors and student groups. Here's an email flyer you can send out to your listservs. Click here for an email template to send to professors or other student group leaders so that they can mention the event in their classes and meetings. AID will even distribute emails widely for you using our mail merge capabilities—just ask us!
4) Create a Facebook event and invite your friends. Paid Facebook ads also work. Need AID’s logo? Download a web-version here.
5) Put your event in the calendar of events. Find your newspaper contact at Newspapers Online. Since community calendars fill up quickly it is vital that you put your event in early. When corresponding via email be sure to put “Event for community Calendar-INSERT DATE” in the headline. Once you have attained contact information and have spoken to someone be sure to follow up with an email or phone confirmation especially 2 days before your event and the day of.
6) Class announcements, dorm meetings, dinner conversations or table tents, phone calls.
7) For other effective tactics, go to Part II of the organizing toolkit and click on the link “Publicity.”
STEP 4 — Prepare for the Event
1) Prepare Pre and Post videoconference remarks: Remember to welcome people to the videoconference, brief them on the format, and let them know who is sponsoring it. Most importantly, explain how this is part of a larger campus campaign and let them know when your next planning meeting is! You can follow this introductory remarks template.
2) Refreshments: Someone should acquire and set up snacks, drinks, or other small edibles. Keep the receipts so that you can be reimbursed if you were allotted a mini-grant. Be sure to provide something vegetarian as well as possibly something kosher or halal.
3) Put up signs on the door of the building, elevators, long hallways, etc to help people find your event.
4) Set-up a welcome table with a sign-in sheet, one page informational sheets on AID, and other information about action campaigns you’ve downloaded from our website and would like to share. Once the event starts, pass the sign-in sheet around the room to make sure you get a record of everyone who was present.
5) Equipment: Nothing is more embarrassing than having the videoconference equipment fail. Please check-in with your technician one hour before the official start time and remind him or her that we’ll be connecting 30 minutes before the official start time.
6) Document the event: Assign someone to take pictures if the press does not send a photographer. We'd love to see your photos as well, so send them to us.
Step 5 – Participate in the videoconference!
Enjoy and engage in the dialogue that takes place. There will be a speaking order announced. Before we call on your site, ask anyone with a question or comment to raise their hands and remind them to keep it to 30-60 seconds before un-muting your mic.
Step 6 – Inform your peers of how they can become involved in your campus campaign.
Remember to recruit students to become engaged in making campus changes that have international impact! This your opportunity to show people how they can influence the local and global climate simultaneously by supporting a carbon neutral campus or the urban environmental accords.
Done? Excellent work! Now you can look back nostalgically on all that labor and look ahead eagerly to the next event. First take some time to decompress, and then:
- 1. Debrief with your group and cosponsors: How did the event go? What worked well and what would you do differently next time? Fill out an event report form at http://www.globalscholar.org/event_report/
- 2. Mail in your reimbursement form and sign-in sheets (AIDemocracy, 701 Cathedral Street, Suite L3, Baltimore, MD 21201)
- 3. Write a letter to the editor to a local newspaper. Send us a letter in progress for editing and feedback. Click for an example letter to the editor written by an AID organizer in the past.
- 4. Follow up with a thank-you note to volunteers and speakers. Sample thank you template available here.
1.Set-up a campus campaign on one of the development issues.
Hopefully this videoconference demonstrated the influence your campus can have on the international community beyond your campus. If you haven’t already, we hope you’ll start a development campaign. There is a comprehensive toolkit that details the fundamentals of planning and running a campaign available just for you!
Additionally, AID offers specific organizer’s toolkits and mini-grants for the following events that you can use as steps along your campaign goal.
2. Consider other campaigns we’re supporting this year:
- Global Development: Run a mini-campaign on an issue varying from HIV/AIDS to fair trade, from maternal and child health to potable water, and from debt relief to environmental sustainability
- Global Health: Prevent Malaria with $10 bed-nets, Birg-dog along the ‘08 campaign trail about HIV/AIDS treatment internationally, and more!
- Global Environment: Get your administration to sign onto becoming a carbon neutral campus or get your mayor to sign on the Urban Environmental Accords.
- Global Peace & Security (Hope Not Hate): Increase cross-cultural awareness and open dialogue about human insecurity, peacekeeping, and nuclear proliferation to name only a few.
3. Setup an AID chapter on your campus!
AID offers an unparalleled number of resources for college students who are interested in bringing the world home to their campuses. When you set up or join an AID chapter, you become a part of a national youth movement of tens of thousands of young people that are working together to promote a U.S. role in the world that is appropriate for our increasingly interdependent world.