Time of Day and Days of Week Offered
Next, offer the program at a time of day that your clients can attend. If you are providing child care, you can offer it through the day, before school age children are home. This allows parents to focus on their pre-school age children. Since Get Set Learn is offered twice weekly, we have found that it is more effective to offer it at the same time on both days, however, we have had 2 different times on occasion. One time we offered the program on a Tuesday and Wednesday. This program had excellent attendance as the parents did not forget to attend the second time in the week. In most cases though, we offer it on a Monday/ Wednesday or a Monday/Thursday. This allows families a day or two to do the homework and get ready for the next class
Transportation
It is important that you find a site where families already congregate. At Project READ, we have had the most success whenever our sites are on a bus route. We also offer bus tickets to all families who need them. This is provided by our funding partner. Some clients will walk, some will drive, and some will take the bus. Free parking is important or reimbursement of parking fees. As facilitator, you want to ensure that there are as few barriers to participation as possible for your participants. This is why it is important to be located in a place where families already frequent.
Where will you find families to participate in your program? Often when beginning a new program, agencies neglect to allow time to develop expertise to fully promote the program and recruit prospective families. In order to introduce the program for the first time, you will need to employ many different ways of promotion. See Outreach Plan in appendices (Appendix 6). A few places to look for families include: