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Starting an Asexual Support/Social Group


tdkennard

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Hello all. Tomorrow (or today depending on time zone differences) I'm sitting down with the founder of the local LGBT center and he's going to help me get an Asexual Support/Social Group up and running (hopefully within the next few weeks). He wants me to be a part of it since I'm the one spearheading this, but I'm still new to the community and I'm still in the process of finding out where I stand in regards to the Asexual Spectrum. If anyone has any advice from past experiences or just ideas to help me out, it would be greatly appreciated. If I'm going to being running or co-running this support group, I want to be able to help and not hinder others. Thanks :cake::cake:

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Awareness is the biggest thing, I think. Getting out what it means to be asexual and helping people figure out whether they are this way could be the most crucial element (aside from making them feel welcome there, obviously). Expressing that there are many different 'flavors' of asexuality will be beneficial. Also, expanding it to include aromantic people should help.

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So for anyone interested the group that I'm spearheading has received positive response and it looks like in December we'll be ready to go for monthly meetings :3 :cake::cake:

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Hello!

My first bit of advice is: figure out things to do! While the first couple meetings can usually run on the excitement of meeting other asexual people and being able to talk about it, you usually want kind of structure or activity eventually or it can start to get boring (providing food does mitigate this a bit though ;) ). For a general group, it also helps to have a mix of more education/discussion based meetings, and more casual/social meetings, though you may want to shift that depending on the goal of your group (I'm mostly used to running student groups, which had a lot of activities, and casual coffeeshop meetups, where the only plan is "meet at this time and chat over food and drinks"). Some ideas that I've used before:

Educational/Discussions:

-watch an asexuality themed movie like the (a)sexual documentary, or an asexual short film

-Have roundtable discussions with some prepared questions on major topics (grey-asexuality, asexual relationships (including friendship), being out (or not), etc.

-Asexuality in the Media: watch and discuss clips of asexual characters!

-have workshop presentations by someone who knows a lot about a particular topic, with time for discussion afterwards

-if you have speakers with interesting knowledge or backgrounds, you can have panels where they tell their stories and other people can ask questions
-etc.

Social/Casual Ideas:

-board game night!

-arts and crafts

-anything with food

-movie nights

-trivia nights

-etc.

It also really helps to have some kind of social media like a facebook page where people can interact outside of meetings.

Also, think about whether this will be a group that's aces only, or aces and allies; whether it's public or confidential, etc. These all work but it's important to know which you are before you start.

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The group has been officially picked up (: If anyone knows anyone in the Oceanside/SoCal area who wants a place to mingle with other Aces let them know lol :cake::cake:

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It's in Oceanside, California (San Diego county) and it's the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 PM. It starts in December. :cake::cake:

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm sure people are getting amused by this topic that keep reappearing, but I'm just once more reminding anyone in the SoCal area that there is an Asexual Support/Social Group in Oceanside, California at 6:30 PM tomorrow. Hope to see anyone in the area who can make it :3 :cake:

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