Kick-Off Event Planning

Goal

• Plan a special event that will get Walk Across Texas started and result in signing up additional members.

Activities

• Select a special starting place for kick-off activity like a local park, mall, a community center, or courthouse—need a place that is easy to get to for most people in your group.
• Select a place for the kick-off activity that will allow people to start walking. The mileage walked for kick-off can be added to their first day mileage total; most groups walk a mile. One popular idea is to make signs identifying Texas cities along your chosen route from a town on the East Texas border to El Paso. On each sign, say, welcome to ________________. You have walked __________ miles. Last sign should say, “Welcome to El Paso. You’ve walked ___________ miles across Texas.”
• Decide on a date and time—schedule the kick-off event about 1 week before the official start date of Walk Across Texas. Invite media coverage of this event because this often results in more people wanting to sign up.
• Decide who will make contact to secure place for kick-off.
• Do you need permits or police escorts because a street or highway is involved? Make necessary arrangements.
• Plan for bad weather and alternate date.
• Identify specifically who will help with this event.
• Plan to have a place/booth where people can sign up and obtain brochures, Team Registration Forms, and Captain’s packets.
• If you are selling Walk Across Texas t-shirts, have someone selling these or taking orders. Costs can be reduced if you get sponsors—the sponsors can be identified on the back of the t-shirts.
• Make sure someone is there to take pictures of people starting on their Walk Across Texas. Send pictures to team captains to distribute to their members by e-mail or post on your website.
• Avoid making screening activities a part of the kick-off event.
  • Screenings involving blood work such as blood glucose or cholesterol require the presence of a clinical agency to do these procedures and handle the blood samples properly; even offering free blood pressure screening requires a clinical agency.
  • Blood work and blood pressure require planning for abnormal results including where will these people be referred and who will be available to counsel them.
  • Blood work for cholesterol most likely would not be returned for at least a week; returning results to people might be difficult; even mailing abnormal results requires a phone number the person receiving the results could call for advice, counseling, and referral.
  • Caution!!! Avoid doing any tests for flexibility, stamina, and strength—too many liability problems if someone gets hurt.
• Kick-off activities could include:
  • Motivational speaker such as someone with a success story of how walking helped their health improve in some way; local officials such as county commissioners, mayors and even state officials have been successful kick-off speakers.
  • Demonstrations of how to get started safely and walk to reduce possibility of injury.
  • Pedestrian safety for walkers and runners.
  • Bicycle safety for those riding outside.
  • Demonstrations of warm up stretches.
  • How to choose the right shoe.
  • Demonstrations of how to determine target heart rate.
  • Avoiding heat exhaustion and heat stroke by drinking adequate amounts of water.
  • Protecting against sunburn.
  • Demonstrations of how to calibrate and use pedometers and determine mileage by driving the route.
  • Showing Walk Across Texas map and telling where it will be posted and when results will be posted weekly.
  • Showing participants what winning team will win.
  • Merchants could be there to sell shoes, pedometers, music tapes to use when walking, t-shirts for teams—great way to get local merchants to support Walk Across Texas; could have drawings for free shoes, etc. or coupons.

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