Written by janine

1. Some Facts and Figures

Having a great team is half the rent and is the first step to take before even starting to think of anything else. In this article we provide you with information on how to find your teammates, how to organize the team, the meetings, and how we rewarded our volunteers. Without them we would have never come so far!

2. Our Approach

2.1. Team Recruitment

First and foremost, you need to recruit your team members. So this paragraph will shortly talk about how we did this and we will also provide you with a template to build the questionnaire. We designed it with typeform, which we think, is a very good tool to prepare surveys. Click here to be directed to a set of questions you could copy to design your own questionnaire!

We shared this questionnaire on all the social media platforms, with our friends and family. You really cannot share this enough!

2.2. Project Management

A Gantt Chart is one of the most important time management tools in project management. It visualizes tasks and helps to schedule the actions. This visual timechart will keep all the members in a team up to date and also helps to communicate milestones. It also helps on getting an overview on how specific actions are interrelated and how you should prioritize them. Many tutorials explain how to set up a Gantt Chart in Excel or Google Sheets. The low waste team also used a Gantt Chart to keep track on the 4 months of preparation and organization.

2.2.1 Meetings

We recommend to have regular meetings, to keep the motivational level high and to build a group dynamics. We begun each meeting with an icebreaker. Those are key to get to know each other, to loosen up the atmosphere of such meetings. Here you find a document with 100 ideas for icebreakers!

2.2.2. Reward

Volunteering is defined as “freely offering to do something” and each volunteer has his or her very personal reason why the are dedicating time and efforts when engaging for a specific cause or organization. Nevertheless, at makesense and Future of Waste, we honor volunteers and we are always trying to give back as much as we can. In helping to organize a festival or event, you receive things such as: a professional or private network, experience in the event industry, and you learn how to organize events.

On top of those big learnings, small gestures can have a bigger impact than you might think. For instance, we tried to always offer some local beers and zero waste snacks during our meetings. This is the least you can do.

Moreover, we offered to pay a workshop to learn how to work with wood, metals and plastics and we taught our volunteers how to do serigraphy. Important is to give a free entrance to the event for everyone who contributed and to provide them with enough to eat and drink during the event. At least, no extra costs should be involved when volunteering for something.

So be humbled and grateful, always!

2.5. Evaluation

We performed an evaluation of the low waste group after completion of the festival. This is important once we start to organize the next festival. We want to do things right and the best way we can, so we asked the ones that know the best. Here is what we asked them:

  1. Overall, how satisfied were you with the Low Waste side of the event?
  2. How would you rate…
    1. … the internal collaboration
    2. … the Low Waste solutions on which the group decided to focus on?
    3. … the success of the Low Waste solutions during the D Day?
    4. … the fun you had in the process?
  3. Would you structure the team differently next time? If yes, how?
  4. What do you think about the amount of responsibility you had?
  5. Would you change something in the internal structure of the group? If yes, what?
  6. Did the event meet your expectations?
  7. Did you learn something new? If yes, what?
  8. Write down 2 things that we should absolutely KEEP next year.
  9. Write down 2 things that we should absolutely CHANGE next year.

4. In a Nutshell

About the author:

Hello all! I am Janine and a community developer for Future of Waste. I am absolutely passionate about waste and I am living a Zero Waste Lifestyle. Now I started jumping into the adventure of a large scale Zero Waste project. I want to help to brush up the image we have about waste – it is a resource and not trash, so let’s be creative!

#zerowasty #mindfuladventurer #wasteissexy

Our website for more information: https://www.makesense.org/futureofwaste

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