Tori Ward is involved in the team for this years Rally in England “Sharing and Caring in a Democratic and Inclusive European Community”, here she shares some of her insight in the process of the arrangements! Has your organisation already registered your team? Deadline on the 28th of June 2019.
The picture above shows the passing of the Rally Bell from previous year’s hosts Scotland, to England last year in Bridge of Earn in Perthshire, Scotland.
I was lucky enough to be asked to be involved with the planning of the 2019 Rally in England. (I say lucky enough, after attending the 2017 rally in Latvia, having the time of my life and hearing NFYFC would be hosting, I sent a lot of enthusiastic emails making sure I WAS involved). Last year I attended the Scottish Rally as part of the international prep team learning all the vital planning information and getting stuck into delivering the programme, which’s behind the scenes was a lot more than I had anticipated. I have to say I learnt a lot that week !!
Recently we hosted the grand prep meeting in England which saw 19 of us from RYEurope staff, the board and members from past, present and future events share knowledge and ideas (and a lot of food!). It was invaluable as this was where the Prep Team for this year’s rally really had their first proper chance to spend a few days thrashing out timetables, session ideas and get the general running of the event off the ground. It also meant we came together as a team and got to know everyone.
During that week we also spent some time at our impressive venue, those of you lucky enough to be joining us in August will hopefully agree we have found the perfect spot for this year’s rally. The Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester really shows off a typically English setting and is well equipped for all our RYEurope needs.
Our biggest challenge so far has got to be funding, due to the current unknown with Brexit in the U.K. we have so far been unable to secure funding from Erasmus+ programme and are seeking sponsorship to allow us to host the rally and make it an enjoyable week for all delegates. Our team and the RYEurope board have been working hard to explore different funding options. We continue to look for sponsors to help us make it a great event.
The theme for this year’s rally is ‘Sharing and Caring in a Democratic and Inclusive European Community’. We will be touching on mental health, the stigmas attached to mental health, how businesses deal with employee wellbeing in their work place, democracy within European countries and using all this to create mental health campaigns for each country to take back to their youth organisation.
The timetable has been completed and responsibilities shared around. Members of the prep team are now getting down to session planning and finalising host families and trips to local businesses.
One of the focuses for the prep team now is social media making sure we are building a community to share our progress and so that we can reach as many people during rally week with what our participants are getting up to. Make sure you follow us @ryeuroperally on Instagram and @ryeuroperally on Facebook.
We are meeting next month to bring everything together and are all very excited to welcome our friends from across Europe to England in August!!
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