Part Two: Implementing Your Strategic Plan, Awareness

Engaging in Public Events

Public events proved an effective way to engage with our community and create awareness surrounding dementia, The Dementia Society programs and services, and Dementia Inclusive Training.

Face-to-face interactions with targeted/highly engaged individuals enable a brand to build relationships, generate awareness, and create opportunities.

Engaging in Public Events (urban)

Participating in urban events such as senior fairs, farmer’s markets, information fairs and trade shows effectively increased awareness surrounding dementia. Taking advantage of urban events is a great tool to create greater awareness of our project within the community.

Step 1

Create a master spreadsheet of upcoming events.

Step 2

Email potential venues to see if we could participate.

Step 3

Find volunteers to attend the event.

Step 4

Create supply boxes for the events.

Step 5

Organize delivery of supplies.

Step 6

Set up display tables with “swag” to distribute (ie. Pens, infographic cards, note pads).

Step 7

Provide information to the public regarding services and direct them to the website to learn more.

Engaging in Public Events (rural)

Rural strategy requires more time devoted to relationship building. Gaining buy-in from the community and politicians is key to building strong, lasting relationships with smaller communities.

Step 1

Same as steps 1-7 in the urban approach in addition to the following steps.

Step 2

Connect with community groups such as the Seniors Council, Seniors Active Living, Recreation Director, Town Council, and local businesses/influencers.

Step 3

Attend local meetings to discuss the format of the event and get ideas for the best way to create awareness.

Step 4

Spend an afternoon delivering flyers door-to-door to businesses to generate interest and promote your event.

Step 5

Advertise on social media sites specific to the community.

As with any new project and process, there are unforeseen challenges. We aim to share the challenges we met and the lessons we learned as a result.

Lessons Learned

Not everyone wants to talk about dementia unless they know of someone living with dementia.
Finding volunteers to attend the events can be challenging, particularly in the summer months when people are on vacation.
Coordinating delivery of the supplies becomes difficult over a large geographic area.

Tips

Visiting other booths allow you to tell your story and solicit businesses/services for training sessions.

Community Engagement Summary

Resources

Throughout The Stronger Together Project, we produced various resources that may be helpful to other organizations.