Healthy Lifestyles Planning Process

1. Establish your objectives
While your ultimate goal is to promote healthy lifestyles in your school community, it’s helpful to define concrete objectives for each particular event for your team to work toward achieving. These objectives will keep you on track throughout the process and provide a sense of accomplishment once your event is over. Reaching your benchmarks also gives you information to share with decision makers in your community and will help in future advocacy and fundraising efforts.

Your objectives should be attainable with a reasonable amount of effort, and there should be clear indicators of success. Be creative and consider what objectives would be most important to your PTA; those objectives can be related or unrelated to health and wellness.
Some sample objectives include:

Number of attendees
Number of community leaders attending
Number of new families attending
Number of new relationships created with community partners
Amount of money raised for new programs
Percentage of positive evaluations

2. Recruit your team
Look for volunteers outside your usual group of parents and community leaders. There are most likely people who are passionate about nutrition and physical activity who could lend a helping hand—even if they’ve never worked with PTA in the past.

Compile a complete list of tasks that must be accomplished—from planning stages to the event’s end. Include tasks you might normally do yourself (such as creating press releases or scheduling meetings with community leaders), as well as tasks you don’t think anyone would volunteer to do (such as filling out paperwork for permits or stuffing envelopes). Parents who can’t be involved in meetings might be willing to help in the evening, after putting the kids to bed. Some volunteers might have skills or connections that would enable them to complete some of the tasks more efficiently than you can.

Divide the tasks between various work committees. Then, begin recruiting volunteers for each committee, making sure that the work is balanced between all the volunteers. Some possible committees include:

Budget committee
Logistics committee
Community outreach committee
Evaluation committee

3. Start the work
Choose a leader from each committee to sit on the overall planning committee. Make sure that each leader understands his or her personal responsibilities as well as the other committees’ tasks.

Organize a kickoff meeting for all committee members, where you give a short presentation about the goals, objectives, and overall expectations for the event. Answer questions and address concerns, ensuring that all members are aware of their responsibilities.

Allow each committee to work independently, with you giving your support when needed, but schedule periodic meetings with the overall planning committee. The meetings’ frequency might increase closer to the event. At each meeting, ask committee leaders to report on current activities; this will help limit duplication of work and allow leaders to collaborate when appropriate.

File your notes, forms, and agendas in a large binder from the outset to help you keep track of all the components of your events.

4) Hold the event

5) Wrap up
Allow your team time to rest and recuperate, but hold a final meeting with all committee members shortly after the event. If applicable, share the results of the parent survey or another form of evaluation. Celebrate your success, but also allow plenty of time for honest feedback. Take careful notes of all comments, and revisit them before planning your next event.

Organize all your notes, fliers, and forms; they can serve as a reference when it comes time to plan next year’s event.