Community Evangelists

Helping to raise awareness and spread the word about Stitch

Aaron Green avatar
Written by Aaron Green
Updated over a week ago

This article is part of a set of articles about Volunteering at Stitch. If you haven't read our volunteering overview yet, you should do so before reading on.

Community Evangelist Volunteering is for people who want to help spread the word about Stitch, raise awareness of the community, and help get new members to join or community organizations to participate. 

Community Evangelists get involved in a variety of ways, which can include:

  • Representing their local Stitch community at promotional events (e.g. answering questions about Stitch at a booth at a Seniors' Expo)

  • Posting flyers about the community in their local area

  • Contacting local media organizations to raise awareness

  • Agreeing to be interviewed by media for stories about Stitch

  • Coming up with creative ideas of their own to promote and advertise Stitch in their local area 

You don't need to be a member of Stitch to volunteer for some of these activities, but it definitely helps if you are.

Below are examples of what volunteers have already done, which you can replicate in your own local community.

Handing out flyers in your local community

One of the simplest things that Stitch members do to raise awareness of the community is to hand out flyers and invitation cards within their local community. 

Community Evangelists do this better than anyone, often posting flyers on their community notice boards, leaving them in cafes, handing them out to people in their local libraries, sharing them digitally to Facebook groups they belong to, and even dropping them in letterboxes in their local areas. 

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Assisting at exhibitions and festivals 

Thirteen Stitch members from across Sydney dedicated their time to spreading the word about Stitch at the NSW Seniors Festival Expo in February 2020, an exhibition that draws 17,000 people. 

At the Stitch booth they handed out thousands of flyers about Stitch, and shared their personal stories about how becoming part of the community has impacted their life.

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Contacting local newspapers

Sisters and Stitch Community Champions Debbie and Chris from Arizona reached out to their local newspaper, believing that a story in the paper would be a great way of introducing Stitch to more people across Phoenix.

Not only did they manage to get their story featured in the newspaper, it was positioned on the front page! 

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Hosting Stitch information events

Community Champions Debbie and Chris (same as above) also helped grow their local Stitch Community by hosting information events specifically designed to introduce new people to Stitch. They did so by posting these events on Meetup.

In a Stitch world first, they took their laptop and television to their first Meetup event and set them up so their attendees could connect with Stitch Founder and CEO Andrew Dowling in a live video chat! 

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Calling local radio programs 

Community Champion Rhonda from Sydney called the Deborah Knight program on the 2GB radio show and shared her experiences with Stitch: 

“Stitch is great for anyone ... It’s a year since I joined. I have never in my whole life been out as much as I have the last year … I love it. I love it so much. I’ve made some wonderful friends, some really lovely friends!”

Listen to Rhonda chatting with Deborah Knight by selecting the button below. Start from 1:16:20. 

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I'm interested! How do I get started? 

If you think that becoming a Community Evangelist Volunteer sounds like something you would like to do, please send us an email and tell us how you would like to help.

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