What we’ve been focusing on this week

• Finishing off work on the first version of our new Leader Handbook. This Leader Handbook has been designed:

  • Collaboratively with our Leaders at the Design Forums we’ve been running throughout Autumn
  • Using learning from the user research we’ve been conducting with both active and future Local Welcome leaders around the UK
  • Drawing from our own knowledge as a team who’ve launching and supported Local Welcome groups since 2015

  The new handbook consists of checklists and toolkits which we’ve designed to support both existing and new groups to launch, operate and grow.

  As well as new resources, some sections of the handbook will also explain new elements of the Local Welcome service that we’re planning to release in 2024.

  Our vision for these handbooks is to help local leaders to start, and operate groups more autonomously, based on their local knowledge and context. This will mean that our small team will have more capacity to support and grow more groups across the UK. 😍

• Planning and promoting the final Leader Design Forum of the year - this will be held via a video call on Thursday 7th December from 6-7:30pm. Please book here if you can attend: https://calendly.com/localwelcome/leader-design-forum-december-2023

  During this design forum we're planning to:

  • Introduce you to our new Leader Handbooks and Toolkits and listen your feedback
  • Celebrate highlights of 2023 together
  • Look ahead to 2024 together

  We’ll share a link to the handbook to everyone who books on so you can take a look before the forum! We can’t wait to see some of you there 😊

• Preparing for meals this weekend - we have a busy weekend of meals in Cardiff, Derby and Liverpool!

(Some of) what we’re focusing on next week includes:

• Focusing on improving our website and social media ads to get more signups.
• Learning from your feedback on our new leader handbooks!
• Debriefing the meals in Cardiff, Derby and Liverpool 💜

Story of the week

We thought we’d share this story and link (instead of a photo) this week which one of our Derby leaders shared in Whatsapp earlier this week.

Yasir, a regular at the Derby Local Welcome group was interviewed at performed some music on Radio Free Matlock on Tuesday evening at 7pm! You can see a Facebook post about this here.

Thank you for reading, and happy weekend!

Celia + The Local Welcome Team