Sleep out to Help national initiative for Spring

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Traceybarkwill
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Sleep out to Help national initiative for Spring

Post by Traceybarkwill »

Good afternoon Everyone. Last year, a group of 8 of us organised and participated in a 'Sleep Out to Help Out' initiative at a Northumberland pub - The Dyke Neuk. This was very carefully planned in collaboration with the manager and we chose a quiet night (Thursday) so that we could optimise our contribution without overwhelming the car park or annoying locals or regulars (which would have been counterproductive to our aims) which are:

1) Generate positive publicity to counteract the, inaccurate, negative, image that has been attributed to motorhome owners re littering etc.

2) Demonstrate the benefits to our local communities and small businesses.

3) Demonstrate that our self-contained style of holidaying/touring is covid safe.

In order to achieve this we:

1) Set up a Whatsapp group for participants to communicate therefore minimising face to face contact and ensuring our plans were not shared with too many people. THIS IS ESSENTIAL - WE CANNOT HAVE PEOPLE TURNING UP RANDOMLY AS OVERWHELMING A VENUE WILL BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.

2) Booked tables in advance for those that ate indoors and ordered take away food to be delivered to our MHS for those who needed to socially distance.

3) Arrived after 3pm so that we could be as unobtrusive as possible and parked considerately (around the edges where possible).

4) Bought breakfast the next day to demonstrate our appreciation of the pub landlord's kindness in accommodating us.

The pub's taking were up by £400 for that one evening, everyone was safe and enjoyed the experience.

Earlier this year, we began to plan the next round of SOTHOS. At a leadership meeting it was decided that we would build this up slowly starting with the North East region (as several of the leaders are available in that area and because the group has a lot of members. The idea was to try it out in 4 areas of the North East then, if successful, roll it out Nationally.

However, members from other parts of the country have come forward to offer to host initiatives in their regions namely North Cornwall and Derbyshire.

This weekend, I have had more offers to host initiatives from members in Lincolnshire and Staffordshire.

Anyone who wants to host can find the guidelines and plans attached but it is up to members to form their own groups (try to stick to a a maximum of 6) & to decide where and when to carry out their initiative. If you put out a call on the main Campra FB page or the Forum, please just mention a general region and do not disclose the actual date and venue until you have formulated your group and can communicate this by Whatsapp, messenger or email group. You will need to ask members to PM you if they want to participate.

I am happy for you to keep me updated on what you are doing but you don't need to. We have a 'Hosts' Whatsapp group up and running which you can be added to if you want.

We are hoping to get some positive media coverage from this and are working on having a pre-prepared statement ready in case the media approach us. Otherwise, we will ensure we get good photos, keep all receipts to demonstrate spending and try to talk engage positively with local businesses whilst we are there to show them what we are spending and how we can contribute to their local economy then, after we have successfully carried out a number of Sleep outs, we will take our information to the media.
Action Plan for SOTHO May 2021.rtf
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guidelines for planning sleep out to help out.pdf
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You can find also find the guidelines on the website.



DykeNeuk-1a.jpg
DykeNeuk-1a.jpg (3.74 MiB) Viewed 2188 times
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