National Youth Sunday > Planning > Making a plan
Once you have your group, get them together over a coffee to start planning. You’ll need to decide where to hold the sessions (a hall is good for a large group, but someone’s front room is just as good for a little group as they’ll feel more cosy and less self-conscious), on what night and at what time. Always plan to use a room slightly too small for the numbers that you think will come. That way, if fewer turn up, they’re not rattling around, and if you get too many, you can move venues the following week. We’ve put together a planning sheet so that you can work out which dates will suit your parish. You’ll also need to talk about how you’ll get your young people together (see the next section).
After that, if you’ve got time, you can start to look at the sessions. It’s vital that the leader has read through all the sessions before the meeting starts, but it’s helpful if everyone else has too. Other good things to do at your first planning meeting include:
1. Share out the leadership for each session: it can be helpful to have two or three leaders for each evening so that one person doesn’t have to head it all up. Sometimes people are happier to lead a silly game than a prayer or vice versa. Work to the skills of your group.
2. Read through the kit lists, and work out who can get what.
3. Play the silly games – no, really! If you’ve played them as a group of leaders, not only will you have a laugh together (really good for bonding a group) but you’ll also know where the game might go wrong.
4. Discuss some of the discussion points. Again, this will give you a chance to hear some of the issues that might arise.
5. Pray together: pray for your young people, parish, and yourselves.
It would take a lot of time to work through all the sessions in one evening, so you could schedule another planning meeting half way through the sessions to look at 3, 4 and the Mass. This will also give you the chance to evaluate how things are going.