4. CONTINUITY

After all your hard work, you’ll want your Café Scientifique to continue after you have left school or college, so in the year that you leave, you will need to think about how to hand over to other students. The earlier that you think about this, the easier it will be to find willing successors. The process that we suggest is:

Spring – around Easter-time, tell cafe participants that you are looking for new team members for the following year. Talk about what roles you need to fill, what will be involved and what the benefits of taking part are. Ask anyone who is interested to contact one of the team (to avoid confusion decide on which one of you it will be, or ask your teacher co-ordinator to be the contact).

Summer – encourage people who’ve shown an interest to come along to team meetings and shadow the person whose role they’re likely to take up. It is a good idea for them to play an active role in the organisation of this term’s cafés if possible, to prepare them for the following year.