How to host a virtual neighbourhood meeting
Step 1.
Book a meeting. Choose a day and time, and a video calling platform to use. We recommend Zoom, check out our guide here.
Step 2.
Invite friendly neighbours. Pick up the phone and call all your survey respondents who ticked that they want to be involved in a local community group. You can also invite any local friends or family who you think would be interested. A couple of days before the meeting, text or call all your RSVPs to confirm their attendance.
Step 3.
Have a great neighbourhood meeting. Getting together with locals is a great way to share your stories and discuss what Building Back Better could look like in Victoria. The main purpose of this meeting is to connect with your neighbours and start planning how to advocate for Building Back Better.
We suggest the following agenda:
- Introductions – Thank everyone for attending and introduce yourself. Ask all attendees to take turns to share their name and why they have come along today.
- Wellbeing check in – Ask everyone to share one challenge and one positive that they have experienced during the pandemic. See if you can point out any similarities of experiences, there’s probably lots in common!
- Survey report back – Give attendees an overview of your survey results so far. You might like to share how many surveys you letterboxed, how many responses you’ve received, and some of the most common survey answers. Is anyone surprised by the answers or was expecting different results?
- Values and policy discussion – Remind attendees what values were listed in the survey. Are there any that are particularly important for recovery? Any values that are missing? What about specific measures and policies? Are there any that really resonated with attendees, or that would have a big positive impact in your area?
- Advocate – To get some of these great recovery efforts happening, we need more people to be hearing about them and calling for them. Ask attendees what ideas they have to spread the word about Build Back Better. We recommend starting by collecting more survey responses from your community – your group could set a goal of 100, 500, or 1000 (or more!) completed surveys to then present the results to your local MP (don’t worry, we’ll help you!).
- Next steps – Agree on what action to take, and start assigning tasks to individuals.
- Close – Before wrapping up, agree on when you’ll next meet as a group and ensure you’ve all shared each other’s contact details so you can stay in touch.
Step 4.
Connect with the Environment Victoria volunteer community (details below) – after your first neighbourhood meeting, get in touch to let us know how it went and how we can help you with your next steps!