By Friends in Denver, Colorado

1. Talk to the Young Adult Friends you see at meeting. Get them to give you their e-mail addresses. Stand up and make an announcement, or have one printed in your announcement or newsletter inviting young adult friends to contact you.
2. Invite them to dinner. See if they’d like to have dinner again, next week or next month.
3. Create a listserve. We have a Google Group. The upside is that anyone subscribed to the group can send e-mail to one address and it will go to everyone. The downside is that because we put our personal info, like addresses, in those e-mails, it is protected and people who are not members cannot add themselves or e-mail the group. About 4 or 5 of us are managers of the list with permission to add or delete people. An added benefit of the group is that each individual can change their own settings, or remove themselves from the group if they want.
4. Use the listserve.
5. Keep having dinner.
6. Talk about your goals. Find out if people want just a social gathering, or if there is a hunger to have a Quaker element to each gathering, or some silence each time you meet.
7. Have fun!
8. Find other ways to get involved in your meeting or region. Our meeting hosts a spaghetti dinner twice a year, just for additional fellowship. Our YAF group offered to host one of them, and bought and prepared all of the food. It was a great way to gain visibility and feel like more of a presence in the meeting, beyond worship.

Note: Every group is different. When I started the group in Denver, I made it clear that I was happy to be a resource but I didn’t want to be the clerk of this group, I didn’t want to coordinate everything and be in a position to plan every gathering. Because I was clear about that, everything has worked out great. We all share leadership. We all invite new people at meeting. Someone e-mails the group each week and offers to host. If no one offers, someone might send and e-mail asking if someone could offer. Otherwise we just skip a week. Some groups will need a leader or someone will want to lead, but this model has worked well for us in Denver.

I’d be happy to talk to anyone who is interested in this. -Maya Wright, Denver, CO