Welcome and Integration

How to welcome and involve new members in to your Local Group (or Community Group).

Resources for Local Group Recruitment

Join the Outreach Broadcast on Telegram. This is a 'broadcast' channel (no chat) listing upcoming training and outreach opportunities for UK-wide actions and new resources e.g. flyers/stickers etc.

Contact XRUK Outreach by email: actions.outreach@extinctionrebellion.uk or visit the Outreach Reception on Mattermost.

Outreach Methods, Materials and Training

Outreach resources can be found here - this information covers:

Preparing for new volunteers

Preparing for new volunteers

Why do we need new volunteers?

New volunteers are the lifeblood of every group

Every group needs the energy, skills, ideas, community connections, diversity and fresh perspective new volunteers bring.

Bringing new volunteers into our groups can be time-consuming and hard work and sometimes a new volunteer quickly leaves again. At times like these, it is tempting to think "oh, we'll just do it all ourselves".

Without a continual flow of new people, a group can end up consisting of experienced but very stretched people with no time to show others how to do things. Then, when one of those experienced people needs to step back, things can get even harder. A healthy group has a mix of people of all levels of experience, with a steady flow of newbies learning, moving on to more complex work, showing others how to do things and relieving the more experienced coordinators of work.

Setting the tone

Before you even start recruiting or doing outreach, think about how you will look after the people when they arrive. New people will need extra care and attention at the start. It is best that coordinating this work falls to someone who is not frazzled from doing a ton of other things, or is shared by the group. This is a job for everyone in the team.

Of course, no one can guarantee that your volunteers will stick with you, but there are some things you can do to make it more likely. At a People's Assembly, XR volunteers were asked why they stayed. These answers came up the most:-

And we really felt part of XR when:-

So, drawing from this, the kinds of things which encourage people to keep coming back include:-

If you can provide these things, then you will have gone a long way to making a supportive and welcoming environment for the new vounteers who arrive in your group.

Ways of Working

We also recommend that you read the Ways of Working guide for how we relate to each other in all teams across the UK.

Preparing for new volunteers

How do we genuinely welcome everyone?

To genuinely welcome everyone we must be inclusive

For guidance on Inclusivity in XR, start here.

More useful resources:

You can contact Disabled Rebels Network via Facebook, or you can email them at wellbeing+drn@exinctionrebellion.uk

Rare exceptions

There are a few rare cases where you might not be able to include someone, i.e. if their needs are beyond what you can reasonably meet, or if they risk causing harm to other people (see ‘Supporting your new volunteers’).

Preparing for new volunteers

What does an Integrator do?

It can be slightly overwhelming joining XR - so much to learn, so many new faces, all that XR jargon and even a new structure to work around.

And this is on top of the anger, frustration or desperation we feel because we face the global catastrophe of climate change, a result of systemic injustice and racial inequality, the effects of which are already being felt all over the world. It can be a lot to process.

And sometimes we forget to welcome new volunteers into XR, simply because we are often so involved in a project which is taking all our time and attention.

For this reason, we should have an Integrator in each of our teams and Local Groups (LGs) - to welcome new volunteers and to make sure that existing Rebels are finding their way on their journey through XR.

Check out the Rebellion Academy Module: Working Group roles, for some videos about being an Integrator.

Standard Integrator mandate

Purpose: to make sure that team/LG members are flourishing and productive and that the team/LG has members to fill its roles and support its workload.

Mandate:-

Different teams break this down differently (for example, you might have one person handling recruitment and a different one for onboarding) but someone will need to be responsible for each of the tasks listed above. Work out who will do what ahead of time so that everyone is clear what to expect.

Not got a team Integrator?

Then this is the first role to recruit for! You may think this person would need to know your team inside out in order to welcome others; but really the most important thing is for them to be friendly, empathetic and willing to learn as they go along. Sometimes, it even helps for the integrator to be relatively new so that they can use their own experience to help others. There are lots of resources on this toolkit to help them.

NB: If you haven't got an Integrator then it is the Internal Coordinator's job to do this work!

Cautionary note: if you are using the volunteer website to recruit, it is important you get to know a new Integrator before giving them login details to your group account since this is a position of great trust and involves handling sensitive personal data.

Onboarding new volunteers

Onboarding new volunteers

Building Onboarding into your Team

We know that one of the main reasons that volunteers stay with XR is that they find a community with us. So how can we ensure that we are as welcoming to as many people, and as many different people, as possible?

The Job of Welcoming

It is an integrator's job to find, contact and induct new volunteers into the team. It is the whole team's job to welcome them.

Make Sure:-

  1. a team member steps up to have a 1-1 chat with the new volunteer in their first week.
  2. a team member steps up to be the new Volunteer's "Point Person" or "Buddy" for their first few weeks, that single port-of-call if the new volunteer has any questions*; and
  3. the team invites the new voluntees to any social gatherings coming up or any activities they may wish to join.
    • (This is especially important if you organise in multiple chats, ensuring they know what's happening)
*A buddy is vital for helping new members to feel welcome and find their feet

The buddy's role/responsibility is:

Some ideas for how a buddy can support a new XR volunteer:

As the Integrator, do think about how the local group will keep track of who is buddying whom.

New Volunteer in the Chat

When a new volunteer is added to your chat (Mattermost, Signal, Telegram...) make sure to say Hi and welcome them. Make sure they know the purpose of various chats and where they can ask for help.

A Volunteer's First Meeting

Do:-

  1. ensure that the team has included their roles and pronouns in their screen names or start off with a round of names and role descriptions; and
  2. have a least one person offer to stay behind to check in with the new Volunteer, see how they found their first meeting and if they have any questions.

Don't

  1. use lots of acronyms and XR jargon! Try to have someone there to call people out on their jargon and ask them to define things.
Onboarding new volunteers

Supporting your new Volunteers

Access needs

Find out about your new volunteer's access needs and any other ways they may need to be kept safe. These may include any disclosed disability that might affect their participation in our community (such as the use of assistive technologies to read emails and the web) as well as participation in events (such as physical access needs, mental-health issues and dietary or other invisible needs).

Gathering this information must always take account of someone's right not to disclose anything, as well as their need for proper support if they do disclose something.

You can find advice on ensuring that you support volunteers with access needs in the Access and Inclusion section of the toolkit.

Keeping each other safe

Any organisation needs to keep its members safe, and we need to make sure that we know if anyone in our community might be classed as vulnerable. If you find any concerns related to a volunteer (whether about their needs or about their potential impact on other volunteers), you may need to draw up a support plan so that volunteers can be protected from anyone who might harm them, either deliberately or accidentally. You should draw up a support plan in consultation with the volunteer who is its focus, and assure them that we want them to take part and are aiming to provide them with the support they need to do this safely.

Where else can volunteers get support?

Please signpost your New volunteers to the pages Care and Respect and Inclusivity in the Intro to XR

Please check your New volunteers have read these and understand the behaviour they are expected to follow.

Integrator Resources

Useful resources to help anyone who takes on the task of welcoming and onboarding new people to a local group.

Resources for new rebels:

Resources for Integrators:

Case Studies:

Integrator (Onboarder) training:

Contact and support

Most Nations and Regions have a volunteer called a 'Gardener' as part of the N/R team. If you don't know who that is, the please contact the Local and Grassroots support team: