Developing an Outreach Program for High School Students
Do you remember what it was like to be an Atheist/Agnostic/Humanist/Skeptic in high school? The SSA gets requests constantly from students in high schools and even middle schools who feel isolated, frustrated, and lost. It is very difficult for the SSA to get in touch with these students because of legal issues, but we don’t want to leave them high and dry. Your campus group could help out the SSA and these frustrated high school students by participating in a high school outreach program.
What Can You Do?
- Make sure you understand that you cannot go to high school campuses and solicit students. You also cannot flyer schools.
- Word of mouth is extremely useful in this respect. Does anyone in your organization have a younger brother or sister interested in the movement? Does anyone in a local organization have a child, niece, nephew, brother, sister, etc. interested in the movement?
- Advertise on your web site. Have a section that high school students can go to that has a link to the SSA (http://www.secularstudents.org) and our high school email listserv HS_Share (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SSA_HS/ ).
- Flyer local businesses or put ads in the local newspaper.
Then What?
- Invite interested high school students to attend your meetings.
- Put the student in touch with the SSA so we can send them a Group Starting Packet and answer any questions they may have.
- Appoint a High School Chair (an education student is a good choice here) who will serve as an intermediary between your group and the high school group. This person should keep in close contact with the high school group to make sure they don’t collapse and can help plan events and joint projects.
- Invite them to attend events.
- Encourage them to start their own group when they go to college.