Starting a Group. Any Advice?

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I would really like to join an AS group in my area, however, I can't seem to find one.
So then I got the idea about starting up my own group for teenage girls and young women on the spectrum. The only thing is, I wouldn't know how to make it happen. Or what to do. Or where to find other young women like me.
I do have one younger friend with AS, although she and I RARELY see or speak to one another. And neither of us have talked about having AS, either.

Has anyone here formed a group? And even if not, could anyone give me advice on starting one or how to lead one if I ever did?

I have experience running a group, starting another right now, and would love to give some advice.

However if you don't mind pming me I could help you out more because I doubt I would ever find this topic again. And I would really like to help out.

Try advertising your group on Craigslist.

Hey,
sounds like a wonderful idea

I have just started running a women-only aspergers group in Birmingham, UK (had our first meeting a few weeks ago) and it would be great to exchange experiences and advice.

If you wanted to PM me your email address, I can send you the plan for the next meeting of my group and our code of conduct and things.

So some advice (bear in mind i'm really still learning what to do myself as well):
One major thing in my opinion is advertising - online on several forums - and if you are in the UK you can put the group on the national autistic society database of service (there might be similar organisations in other countries), and posters eg at the library. One idea from my friend which I havent got round to doing yet is sending posters to the disabilites offices of local universities too. Don't worry if you dont get many people for the first few months, it takes a while to get things going.

I think its important to have a plan how to deal with any problems - not to scare you because this hasn't happened in my group and everyone is lovely, but we have a code of conduct so that if anyone did misbehave and cause other people trouble in the future we could deal with them and if necessary ask someone to leave.

And to get people to participate and share ideas - what I had at the first meeting was a discussion about what sort of things people want from the group and what they wanted to do. I'm planning to ask people every month at the end of the group, then make a plan for the following month and email it round to anyone who's interested.

My group is for adults only - you might find there are specific things to be aware of if you are having young people under 16, I dont really know enough about that to give advice.


good luck with it, I think it sounds like a brilliant idea.

Emily

Why womens only?

Hi Buryuntime.

In Birmingham where I'm running it there are already 3 mixed groups available which men can attend (and women too). I've tried to make sure mine is on a different day so people can attend both if they want to. The reason I decided to run a women only group is that as aspergers is diagnosed in 10 x as many men as women, we can be very outnumbered in a mixed group and often be the only or one of only a few women there.
And I think there are definately benefits to attending a mixed group and getting to know other people with AS. But there are also things where aspergers affects women differently, or where we have different experiences because of the different expectations of women in society, or because of professional's stereotypes of AS as a male condition. Also its nice to have a group where some of the guys aren't trying to chat you up (in general most of the guys were fine but one or two made me feel very uncomfortable).
And so I wanted to run a women-only group where we can talk about things that affect us and meet other people in a similar situation.

Thank you for the advice. I'm still thinking about it.