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Leader Enrichment Day

October 2006, Northern California/Hawaii

By Cindy Howard

Our Area decided to try having a conference every two years, alternating with a CE day for health care providers, followed by a Leader enrichment day with the CE speaker. We make almost as much money from a single CE day and it's much less work. Also with so many more breastfeeding coalitions and organizations sponsoring conferences, it's hard to find a time when we don't conflict with another organization. This schedule ensures that our event is held the same time every year so other organizations can plan around us.

Our CE speaker was Linda Smith. Some Leaders came only to the CE day and some Leaders came to both events. We used Surveymonkey to enlist Area Leaders’ help in choosing Linda Smith's topics (from the list she shared with us, excluding the ones we had already asked her to present for the CE day) for the Leader day and also the title of the Leader day event. The Leaders who voted chose LEAD: Leader Enrichment and Applicant Development. Leaders seemed to like the cute acronym but I found there was little name recognition when I used the title “the LEAD."

The two events were held in different locations in the same city - we were able to find a free location for the Leader event. Some Leaders were surprised to learn that we wouldn't be at a hotel so we found a local family-friendly hotel and negotiated a family rate for Leaders who wanted to spend the night. We asked Leaders on the Events Team what they wanted to do for lunch and everyone wanted a catered lunch instead of a potluck. The Leaders in the local District arranged a continental breakfast - Leaders baked and froze muffins and we got donations from Costco and Safeway for tea, yogurt, and fruit. The site provided coffee. We used the same caterer for both the Friday CE day and the Saturday Leader day - the caterer provided box lunches with a variety of sandwiches on focaccia bread. The lunches were really good and both the health care providers and the Leaders appreciated a less formal lunch.

The general schedule for the Leader day was:

Morning: Linda Smith presented two sessions

Lunch: Lasted for 90 minutes and was held outside at tables in a grove of trees.  We made placards for the tables so Leaders could choose to meet and eat in smaller groups: home-schoolers, lone Leaders, Applicants, etc.  Some tables had blank cards for Leaders who wanted to choose groupings for themselves.

Afternoon: Resource Fair for two hours, followed by a birthday celebration. Click here to read more about the Resource Fair.

Because there were books left over from the CE day, we had a bookstore open during lunch and the Resource Fair.  I’ve not yet seen the financial report, so I don’t know if this bookstore was worthwhile.

The birthday celebration focused on 50 years of LLL. When she arrived in the morning, each Leader found either a trivia question or an answer in her folder, which provided the basis for an icebreaker to start off the birthday celebration.  Each Leader needed to find the person with the matching question or answer. The questions were the top song, president, top TV show, first class postage, best movie picture, and most popular boy and girl names for babies in 1956, 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, and 2006. These questions turned out to be much harder than I thought they would be - and the hardest question was the presidents. (Do you know the presidents for each of those years?)

 I put together a humorous slide show with the answers for each year and then for each decade I showed a graph with the breastfeeding rates at birth and 6 months. At each decade I paused for the Leaders who had been accredited in that time period to come forward, put their name on the wall, and receive a small gift. Then we recognized newly-accredited Leaders and Leader Applicants with special gifts, had birthday cake, and everyone helped clean up.

About 75 (out of 230) Leaders attended. According to the evaluations, most Leaders prefer having an annual event, alternating between an Area Conference and a CE day/Leader day. What I liked about this day was that Leaders came for the CE sessions, and received practical Group management information, also. At Area Conferences, the newer Leaders tend to focus on the CE sessions and miss out on the Group management sessions, which are equally important.

One thing I noticed is that by the end of the day many of the newly-accredited Leaders and Leader Applicants had already left, so they weren't present to be recognized. We deliberately held the celebration at the end of the day because it's hard for new Leaders and Applicants with little ones to get to a session at 8 AM. I suppose it's equally challenging to keep toddlers entertained until 4 PM, even though we did have a play area with toys in the back of the room. We're exploring options for honoring new Leaders at the next Area Conference.