STAKE THEME: -
- Each year we select a "Stake Theme". If the General YW Presidency
has a theme for that year (such as this year "Stand as a Witness"), that
is the theme we use. We also design/select a logo to go with the
theme. We encourage the wards to use this logo as often as possible
to visually remind the girls of the theme. (For example, one year
our theme was "Stand as a Light" and our logo was a lighthouse.
This year our theme is "Stand as a Witness" and we have used the YW Torch
as our logo.) We also give each ward something that they can display
each Sunday in Young Women's to remind the girls of the theme. (One
year we poured and painted 15" ceramic lighthouses to remind them of the
"Stand as a Light" theme.) At the Leadership Training Meeting in which
we present the upcoming year's theme, we give each ward a folder of ideas,
handouts, and resources. We also burn a CD ROM for each ward which
contains: 1) the upcoming year's logo in color, grayscale, and Black and
White (in 3 different graphic formats), 2) copies of our talks, handouts,
quotes, etc. in a RTF format (Rich Text File format, so that the
text will read into any word processing program), 3) graphics of any posters
or visual aids we use at that meeting, 4) an updated roster of all the
Leaders and YW of the Stake, and 5) anything else they may want to reproduce
or hand out to their young women or YW leaders. This has been very
helpful to them to remind them of what they were taught at the meeting
and of our vision of "what we want to see happen" in the wards of our Stake.
At each succeeding Leadership Training Meeting, we collect the CDs from
the wards a couple of weeks ahead of time and add all of the new talks,
quotes, and graphics we will use at the upcoming meeting. This has
proved most helpful in keeping our wards focused on the theme. AUXILIARY TRAINING MEETING PACKET: -
- We give a packet of activity and other fun ideas to our ward leaders
at each of our auxiliary training meetings. For one packet,
we asked each young women's presidency in our stake to give us their
Top Five activities (class, combined, YW/YM, etc.) of the year, along
with details of how the activity was carried out, why it hit the
Top Five, and suggestions for improvement. The ward leaders
LOVED the idea of tapping the resources of their own stake - especially
since they knew who they could contact with questions. IDEA AND INFORMATION SWAP: - One idea I would
like to share is that we as a presidency have invited our surrounding Stake
Young Women's leaders to come to an informal meeting to an Idea and
Information swap. Each presidency is supposed to come with copies so that
everyone takes home new ideas for their stakes. Our first meeting
is tomorrow night and we are all excited! Jayne, Chino California