Promoting Attendance at Your Town Hall Meeting

Your Town Hall Meeting (THM) has a specific goal: to increase community awareness of underage drinking and its prevention. But, unless community members attend, the vital information shared at your event is in danger of being like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest. To ensure that your prevention message is heard throughout your community, create a plan for maximizing attendance. Implementing the right mix of promotional strategies will help bring people to your THM and is a key step in engaging parents, youth, teachers, government and local business representatives, and others who should be part of a communitywide effort to prevent underage drinking and its consequences.

Begin by identifying groups who should attend your THM and how you might best reach them. What will catch their interest; what will attract their eye? If you are trying to attract both youth and their parents, you may need to consider more than one approach. As any adult who has never ridden a skateboard or sent 200 text messages in a day knows, there can be a huge generational gap between the interests and communication channels of a parent and a young person—both of whom should be involved in underage drinking prevention. You may need to jumpstart attendance at your THM by thinking "outside the box." For example, perhaps simply renaming your event to appeal to your desired audiences will bring in more people. As one person commented on the THM discussion board, Town Hall Meeting might have an “older generation” sound to it and not appeal to adults and young people alike. Be creative in naming your event around the issue and your audience. Some options tailored for different primary audiences include:

• Not My Child: A Community Discussion about Underage Drinking (parents)
• What Are Teens Thinking about Underage Drinking? A Town Hall Discussion (adults and youth)
• The Whole Town Is Talking: A Town Hall Meeting on Underage Drinking (adults and youth)
• A Community Conversation on Underage Drinking (adults)
• Myths and Facts about Underage Drinking (adults and youth)
• Too Smart To Start: You and Alcohol (youth)
• There’s No Class at the Bottom of a Glass: You Booze, You Lose (college students)

After selecting your audiences and an appealing event name, you need to identify ways to encourage their attendance. Examples of different venues for promoting your event follow. When creating an announcement, be sure to include the names of sponsors, collaborators, and partners to demonstrate community support for UAD prevention.

Although there are many venues and opportunities to promote THM attendance, Web-based methods can have the broadest reach at the lowest cost. These include:

• Web sites: If your THM is intended for youth or youth and their parents, ask local schools to post an announcement on their site. Include schools from elementary to high school, because it’s never too early to engage parents in prevention. Make the same request of other community-based organizations that serve each audience and have a Web site, such as a recreation center or gym, a child care center, or the local “Y.” Post your THM announcement on your organization’s home page as well, so that anyone who visits your site will see it.
• Online blogs and message boards: Both of these methods are conversational forums where community members can initiate discussions and leave messages for each other. For example, you can post a question regarding how to promote a youth-focused THM or how to create the best agenda and speakers for such an event. You may want to ask a young person to post information on a blog that local youth visit.

In additional to Web-based methods are these more traditional ways to promote THM attendance:

• Posters and flyers are simple and inexpensive. Display posters anywhere your intended audience might visit; for example, at coffee/smoothie shops, public libraries, churches, wellness and prevention centers, and at other businesses that work directly with youth and parents/caregivers. You also can email flyers to anyone for free with one keystroke.
• Newsletters: Ask wellness centers, faith-based organizations, and youth centers to share your THM meeting announcement with their constituencies. Many organizations use listservs in sending out electronic newsletters, which eliminates mailing costs. In approaching these organizations, be ready to describe how the prevention of underage drinking supports their mission, the health of their members, or both.
• School announcements: Join forces with school principals, school nurses, teachers, counselors, coaches, alumni, students, and parents to promote your THM. Ask schools to post flyers at sports events and parent meetings and in their hallways and health center. Many schools have student-produced news programs that can announce and encourage THM attendance. Some colleges have radio stations; they too can publicize your THM.

Working through community-based organizations to promote attendance at your THM is another way of supporting The U.S. Surgeon General’s Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking (PDF - 1.4 MB), which states in part that “underage alcohol use is everybody’s problem—and its solution is everybody’s responsibility.”

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