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Along with advanced planning is advanced publicity - especially the
first few times. As we have all experienced, getting people to
actually respond to publicity, whether it is print, media or personal
announcements is frustratingly difficult. An item has to be brought
up again and again, in every way possible.
Publicity for the Unknown Destination trip can be as playful as the
activity itself. Tease with the unknown aspect. One year I had a line
"Where? We will be going to sdwev [this word was actually in a symbol font which I don't have available in this blog]."
Some of my computer literate young people tried doing font
substitutions to see if I had actually given the destination in code.
This created an even more interest in the trip.
One important part of all publicity and all conversations or
correspondence with parents is to assure them that you know
exactly where you are going and what you will be doing with their
child -- that everything is worked out in detail and that parents
will receive a complete itinerary just before you drive away. This is
hard for a lot of parents and it may difficult at first to get
parental support. As I will explain later, there will be a lot of
pressure to fill parents in ahead of the event and this could destroy
the trip – for this event to work as advertised, it is important to
assure parents without giving them advanced information. If a
particular youth has a particular medical or other condition that has
to be taken into consideration, find out from the parent what the
condition is. In most cases you can adjust the trip to work around
the concern and assure the parent that everything will be all right.
In some cases you may need to tell a parent that the child may have a
problem or be exposed to something that may affect the condition. It
then becomes the parent's decision whether or not to send the child.
You can be sensitive to the youth's situation without being bullied
into revealing what you won't reveal to other parents.
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