Plan Your Own Retreat!

Plan Your Own Young Women’s Retreat
Getting Started

Draft a strategy
- Decide what age group your retreat will invite
- Decide how many chaperones you will need
- Select a theme for the weekend - will you focus on modesty, dating, womanhood, spiritual disciplines, or how to have devotions?
- Outline a tentative budget
- how much the total expected cost will be
- how much the local churches will each donate
- how much the local conference will contribute
- how much each girl will need to pay
- Contact RdM staff to find out suggestions and ideas (info@redefinitionministries.com)

Talk to your church
- Ask your church youth leader if they would be willing to support and encourage a local young women’s retreat
- Ask your church board to sponsor part of the cost
- Ask the local Women’s Ministries director for support

Talk to other churches
- Find out if young women in other nearby churches want to attend too
- Ask if their youth leaders/women’s ministries directors will be supportive also

Talk to your young women
- Ask your local young women what they’d like to see at a retreat
- Survey how many plan to come
- Find out how many can afford to pay a fee for themselves and which ones may need sponsoring

Talk to your conference
- Ask if they will contribute a specific amount, perhaps the cost of bringing a speaker or some other quantifiable aspect of the program

Decide on a venue
- Your conference church camp?
- Your local church school?
- Will girls be staying overnight/coming each day? (Usually it is best to take your group away for the weekend - they can focus on the spirituality of the themes much better.
- Will you bring your own food or eat meals at the camp cafeteria? What cost can be saved by bringing muffins and juice for Sabbath breakfast, for instance?

Choose a speaker
- Find a speaker who will meet the needs and interests of your local young women (RdM speakers are splendid for this, of course!)
- Ask your speaker what they cost (most speakers charge all travel expenses, meals and accomodations, as well as a speaker fee, which may vary according to the speaker and the length of your retreat)

Plan music and activities
- Select musicians for the weekend retreat (these may be people you bring in for a concert, or local talent from your church to lead singing and praise worship)
- Plan out the weekend schedule with the musicians so they can be fully prepared for every set of music and match appropriate songs to various themes and topics

Collect items for gift bags
- Local stores will often donate for events, we have seen places like Bath & Body Works, make-up lines, and other local shops freely donate plenty of product for young women’s retreats, in exchange for encouraging the girls to visit them for business - they just have to be asked nicely! This is especially great if you intend to include any topic for girls concerning makeup or skin care in your retreat.

Market your retreat
- Make sure that every church in your region knows about it
- Compile an email list of all the young women in your city (get it from local youth leaders) and email them a personal invitation
- Make posters and bulletin inserts and run them in every church for at least 3 sabbaths in a row, at least one month prior to the retreat
- Ask your local youth leaders to make regular announcements

Logistics
- Offer to take a church van to the camp for those who aren’t old enough to drive
- Coordinate carpooling among girls who have vehicles
- Make sure every girl’s parents sign a medical permission and release form before coming to the retreat
- Make sure all girls and their parents know that the retreat weekend is off-limits to boys