Family friendly properties could truly benefit from adopting a practice of hosting what I like to call “Parties with Purpose” especially when it comes to hosting events for children.
One of my all time fave summer events is one I like to call The Annual Lemonade Project. This event can take up to about a three to six week commitment but believe it or not it takes very little effort to pull off and gives your residents something special to look forward to year after year.
With careful planning, delegation and creativity this will raise the morale within your property for a long time coming.
The Lemonade Project is a fun and exciting lesson in entrepreneurship for the children on your property. It is designed to not only get them involved with their neighbors but to teach them lessons about teamwork, creativity, service and more. The objective is to bring the children together to create their own lemonade stand that will be open for business for one day every year for your residents.
The first thing you want to do is create a schedule. You will need to work backwards and figure out important dates and times as you have to know exactly where you are going with this and when before you present it.
Let’s say you decided on May 3rd that you wanted to start hosting this event on your property. You would need to give yourself at least a week or maybe two depending on your current resident participation to invite the parents and children out to your “Original planning and kick-off meeting”.
For the sake of keeping things simple I’ve created a mock schedule with explanations for you to review as we move along.
May 3rd
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Decide to do the project
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May 5th
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May 15th
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Host Kick-off meeting
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During the Kick-off meeting you would explain the project, assign roles, set dates and begin the initial planning of the project. You will want to assign the following roles to participants.
Marketing Director
Marketing Assistants
Operations Manager
Builders
Designers
Customer Service Managers
Finance Director (No worries, it’s all play money)
Sales staff
Hosts
Clean up Crew
Keep in mind that none of this has to be written in stone as we can’t predict the number of participants you will have and you can put your own spin on it even including adult help in some areas, perhaps making the children director. The point is to talk to the children about these different roles and what they mean. You may even assign multiple roles to multiple children depending on your individual situation.
At this meeting you will decide the theme, colors, set-up. Let your minds go wild. Perhaps you could have already purchased samples of decorations and could allow them to vote which décor they choose to use or you could just throw some ideas out there. Perhaps you will hold another meeting where they will create all of the décor themselves…kinda like an arts and crafts party. This is totally up to you.
When you all leave the first meeting you should have delegated all the roles, come up with a theme, name etc. and have a schedule and plan in hand for the upcoming weeks including the marketing plan, building and décor schedule and official date for the final Lemonade Stand day.
Below I’ve drawn the schedule out a bit more in order to give you a visual.
May 3rd
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Decide to do the project
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May 5th
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May 15th
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Host Kick-off meeting
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May 20th
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Lemonade Stand Flyers and play money due for approval
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May 22nd
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Marketing team starts distributing flyers and marketing online etc.
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May 28th
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Décor is purchased or created and approved
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May 30th
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Build and decorate stand
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June 1st
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The Lemonade Project is open for business
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Now the schedule I’ve written is just enough to get your wheels spinning. Take out what you will and add what you will. Physically meet or don’t meet as often as you feel you need to. Do with this what you believe you need to do with it in order to make it successful.
The only thing left to do now is host a great event. Happy Planning!
Talisa Lavarry
Founder
Resident Keepers LLC
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