THE CHRISTMAS DINNER How To Guide 1 Welcome to The Christmas Dinner. It is an annual project founded by the poet Lemn Sissay MBE for communities to provide a Christmas Day for care leavers aged between 18 and 25. One they’ll never forget.This 2 Contents 4 Welcome 3 About 5 Vision, Mission and Values 7 How To Use This Guide 8 The Steering Group 11 Guests 10 The Eight Elements 13 Hosts & Helpers 14 Finance 15 Presents 17 Communications 19 Venue & Design 20 Food, Chef & Maître D’ 22 Transport 24 Christmas Eve & Christmas Day 23 On the day 26 Afterwards 27 Timeline 3 About 4 Welcome 5 Vision, Mission and Values 7 How To Use This Guide 8s The Steering Groups 4 This is a practical guide on how to make a dinner happen in Welcome your community. It combines all the ideas and best practice from our Christmas Dinners. This is a 2013 - London 2014 - Manchester and London practical 2015 - Manchester, London Leeds 2016 - Manchester, London, Leeds, Liverpool and Oxford guide on how We look forward to adding your Dinner to this list. In order to ensure your Christmas Dinner your team will need to make the following commitments: to make a • Attend ten meetings across four months to make The Christmas Dinner happen dinner • Find fifteen Steering Group members • Find up to fifty care leavers (our Guests) • Find twenty volunteers to Host The Christmas Dinner on happen in Christmas Day • Manage the £5000 contingency from The Lemn Sissay Foundation your • Attend Christmas Dinner Training in December • Put every effort into finding presents, a venue and food in-kind community. • Have fun! 5 Our Vision • Celebration and Playfulness – We celebrate the care leaver, Mission, Vission, Values the Steering Group member, the donor, the host, the taxi No care leaver will be alone on Christmas Day. driver, the cleaner and we celebrate the day. The Christmas Dinner is a joyful process and event. Our Mission Awards We will mobilise local communities across the UK to put on scrumptious and magical Christmas Day dinners for Care Some Steering Group members and Hosts have been nomi- Leavers aged between 18 and 25, turning Christmas into a time nated for awards in their communities for their contribution to to cherish. The Christmas Dinner. Congratulations to: Our Approach and Values Lemn Sissay, who won a NESTA New Radical Award, 2016 We embody these values in all that we do: Jill Abram, whose contribution was recognised at The York- shire PA Awards, 2017 • Adaptability and Resilience – Putting on a Christmas Din- Polly Mosely, whose work on the 2016 Liverpool Dinner was ner from scratch in four months is a creative and inventive recognised at The Shine Awards process. It takes flexibility and a solution-focused attitude. The University of Manchester Catering Team, whose efforts • Courage and Commitment – Christmas can present par- won a Making a Difference Aaward in Manchester 2017 ticular challenges for care leavers. We have the courage to be change makers and are committed to raising awareness through action. • Empathy not Sympathy – We hold this value dear in The Christmas Dinner process. • Respect – We have respect for ourselves and respect for others. We look after ourselves and each other from start to finish. • Collaboration – The Christmas Dinner is built on collabora- tion. With theWithout it, the Dinner wouldn’t succeed. It’s just that simple. Together. 6 Media Interest The Christmas Dinner has increasingly attracted local and national press and television coverage. In 2016 Lemn Sissay and other volunteers appeared on BBC Breakfast News on Christmas Day talking about the project. Here are a couple of newspaper articles from previous Dinners: The Guardian December 2016 The Guardian Christmas Dinner 2013 And you can read more about Lemn’s vision in his blog: What is The Christmas Dinner? Media coverage is extremely useful, as it helps with securing venues, gifts and fundraising. Our Vision: No care leaver will be alone on Christmas Day. 7 This Guide was put together following a meeting of represent- How To Use This Guide atives of Christmas Dinner Hosts and Steering Group members from Manchester, London, Liverpool, Leeds and Oxford in early 2017. The Guide shares what we have learned about what needs to be in place to make The Christmas Dinner a success, use this and offers up some suggestions and resources that can help along the way. Guide as a The strength of The Christmas Dinner is that it is organised by teams of local people who know their community. As a result, each Dinner has a local flavour, that reflects the colour and life framework of its host city, town or region and that means that each Steer- ing Group will approach the task in its own way. That’s fine, because we don’t want you to read this Guide as a book of in which you hard and fast rules; so use this Guide as a framework in which you can construct your own amazing Christmas Dinner. can Indeed, there are very few hard and fast rules (but where there are we will point them out). construct your own amazing Christmas Dinner. 8 The steering group is the beating heart of the Dinner. The Structure of the Steering Group The Steering Group Christmas Dinner is not an organisation in the classic sense. But it is organised. It’s a group of people who have come to- A central person ‘chairs’ all meetings. This can be a rotated gether from the local community with the sole aim to provide role. Do whatever works for you. It can be useful for a mem- a scrumptious Christmas Dinner for care leavers on Christmas ber of another Christmas Dinner Steering Group is present at Day. your initial meeting to help with the first steps. The Steering Group works in smaller sub-groups, with each group taking on The Steering Group meets eight to ten times from September responsibility for organising one of the Eight of The Christ- to December with a debrief in January. Before recruiting for mas Dinner (see below). The agenda of each meeting is built the Steering Group have the dates of those eight meetings around each group reporting back on progress, challenges, already in the diary so that prospective members can see what achievements, etc. they are signing up to. The meetings are primarily to feedback on progress, seek advice, pool ideas, and plan next steps. The To ensure continuity and clarity of vision at least four members meetings are a place for problem solving. The Timeline (see of the Steering Group should be present on Christmas Day. below) keeps momentum and will serve as a gentle nudge. Sub groups can meet outside of these meetings. Connections can be made via social media. More of that later. Location of meetings Find a room that has accessible transport links, to trains, bus- Finding people for your steering group es, within cycle range and has parking. It should be free and relatively warm. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to find a free They should be diverse and from mixed disciplines: care room for a great cause. professionals, professional creatives etc., teachers, lawyers, doctors, ex mechanics, anybody... They embody the values of The Christmas Dinner and come together to realise the vision. Project Phone You’ll need up to fifteen people. They can be found through social media networks or a notice in your shop window or post It’s essential to have a project phone, both pragmatically and office. Ask at work, ask friends. You can use these videos from for safeguarding surrounding referrals. A pay as you go phones Manchester 2013 and London & Manchester 2014 to drum up from local supermarkets can be as little as £12.99. Phone cost interest and gather support. can be deducted from your £5,000 Christmas Dinner budget, see Finance section, 9 Email and Social Media By the end of your first steering group meeting The You immediately need an email address that identifies the • Agree the dates/location for the meetings project. You should also set up Facebook and Twitter accounts • Share name/job title and contacts (see Communications). • If there are areas of The Christmas Dinner where Steering Group members are not in place, make a commitment to steering One small, but important thing: You should give some atten- finding them tion to how you manage your email communications. In the • Ensure someone has been nominated to buy the project past, we have found that there can be a bewildering amount phone group of emails circulating around the Steering Group and this can • Nominate someone to set up the general gmail and ensure lead to confusion and miscommunication. Once you have split that everyone who needs to can access the account. into your work groups try to restrict your email conversations • Whoever is in charge of the Referral team should operate to those within your workgroup. Keep big questions around a separate gmail account in order to manage access to is the issues like crowdsourcing to the meetings. potentially sensitive information • Nominate someone to set up the Facebook page and Twitter account beating Minutes • Nominate someone to set up a Google Drive (as part of the gmail address) and store the logins for accounts. Google It’s good to take minutes of each meeting. They don’t have Drive is crucial for sharing documents such as volunteer/ to be detailed, but they should note what has been agreed host application forms, blank referral forms etc. It can also heart and make it clear who is responsible for what.