The first thing to do when starting a project or an activist group is to get your team organized. Does an NWIP or IPPNW student group already exist - or do you need to start from scratch?
If a group already exists we suggest you join forces with them. They can help you get acquainted with the project and IPPNW and they will know where you can find further information.
If no active student group exists the international NWIP group can help you get started by providing materials about the project, nuclear weapons, disarmament work and IPPNW. You should contact IPPNW groups in your country if any exists. You can find information about IPPNW affiliates at the IPPNW website or you can contact the IPPNW Student Coordinator, Molly Goggin, mgoggin@ippnw.org
You need to recruit the team you are going to work with. The best way to do so is by advertising at your school. Talk to your friends and contact student groups working on similar issues. Students from the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations' (IFMSA) might be interested in working with you. Can you think of any others who might be interested or who are potential allies?
An important part of building a team is to get to know each other. Teambuilding exercises always focus on the social component as well as learning how each of you work in a team. So you could start by arranging a dinner together, go see a movie, meet for coffee in a café. You could also start your career as a disarmament activist by a smaller project like making some cool posters or organizing a debate at your school.
The second, but essential part of getting started is to set your goals and make a plan. You need to be realistic when setting your goals. It is a tough balance. On the one hand you will never be bigger than your ambitions on the other hand you don't want to lose your energy by attempting to do too much at the same time.
A good way to get a better of idea of how to best meet your goals is to do a brainstorm. When brainstorming it is important to remember that all contributions are valid. It is an open process where you build on each other's ideas through free associations. Therefore it is important not to comment on the different ideas and not to edit the process. Just write everything you think of down on a piece of paper and then you can always discuss it in more detail afterwards.
When you have your goals set and a lot of ideas on the table of how to meet your goals you can try to analyse the context in which you find yourself in more detail. A useful tool for this is a SWOT analysis. It stands for Strengths & Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats. Strengths and weaknesses are internal things in your group. Things you can influence or change whereas Opportunities and threats are good and bad things in the environment you need to take into consideration and try to benefit from or plan to avoid. An example of a strength is if your group already know each other and a weakness would be that you have no experience with disarmament work. A threat would be that you are very busy as students and have limited time for voluntary work and an opportunity is that the NWIP and IPPNW already exists, so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Do you get the picture? Try it yourself...
Finally you need to be more concrete in your planning. If you have decided on good and measurable goals you can start plotting them into a timeline. By when do you need to have finished what to meet your ultimate goals? and who will do it?
A document with goals, a context analysis, actions to be taken, a timeline and a list of what to do is called a plan of action and that is a very useful document when embarking on project work.
To help your brainstorming along we here provide a list of ideas for disarmament activism. A lot of additional information exists on how to get started and we strongly encourage you to consult that as well as literature on nuclear policies, IPPNW and NWIP before you start your planning process. That will save you a lot of time. Good luck with the work!
Here is a list of ideas you can use when planning you activities...