At the risk of reopening the can of worms that seems to follow this subject where ever it goes; is there an effective way to reach home schooled students on a large scale to distribute recruiting materials?

I know that a significant percentage of CAP cadets are homeschooled (myself included), but all that I know personally were recruited by a friend, and not part of a large scale recruiting program. I would like to be able to focus an effort toward the homeschooled students in my area, but am at a loss as to how to go about doing this. I have had great success from distributing materials at public schools, but the decentralized nature of home education makes this difficult.

Has anyone here made any effort to actively target home educated students? If so, what worked, what didn't work, and do you have any suggestions? I was thinking a mass mailing of some sort, but I don't have the foggiest idea how to get a hold of names and addresses to send stuff to.

I have seen the grapevine yield tremendous results in the homeschool crowd. One or two families have a good experience, and you may suddenly have dozens of cadets beating your door down.

Also, obviously, there are co-op groups.

^ What Dano said

It's been my experience that a lot of homeschooling parents belong to homeschooling organizations, be it social, educational, or religious in nature. When we've gotten waves of homeschool students in the past, it's because one parent found out about it, and spread the word through their personal networks.

So, I'd start there. Ask your parents, and your homeschool friends' parents, what organizations they belong to, and see if you can pitch CAP to them (even if it's just an E-mail to a mailing list).

See if the local homeschooling group does an open-house type deal, where different organizations/activities can come in and recruit. My home unit has seen good results from such nights. And as others have said, the grape-vine works. Every family down the length of one street back home has at least one kid in the program.

I would completely agree with the above statements about word of mouth. I believe the top two recruiters in our squadron are both homeschooled students that invited their mostly homeschooled friends.

If you currently don't have any homeschoolers, you can reach out to homeschooling groups. This might take some searching, but there is most likely one around you. Also, as I recall my homeschool days, there are homeschool fairs or the like that often happen about once a year. These are most likely held in the late spring and into the summer (my guess, the one we went to was in May I think) when parents are looking to buy new materials. You could see about getting recruiting materials into there.

I had a few homeschooled cadets that inquired because CAP had taken an add out in their national magazine. They had gone to a convention and were given the magazine.

One cadet joined and soon others followed. Homeschool seems to be a pretty close knit community in the areas I've been in. If you get one eventually more will follow. It also helps that they can get school credit for nearly everything we do...

http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1


A lot of homeschooling parents are part of this organization. We used to home school our kids until my wife went back to work. They send out weekly emails. Maybe you could contact them about the best way to reach people through a mass email or something? It would go nationwide.

There are also several magazines and journalsthat support the homeschooling movement.

IIRC, one of them did a feature on CAP, but it was several years ago.

I'm homeschooled as well. I can tell you, however, that on occasion I'm forced to go outside for something that isn't CAP related. That's the key - people go outside. Put up booths at festivals, swap meets, stores on weekends, you name it! My city's 'winter festival,' our equivalent to a corn festival or an apple festival, brought me in. I've brought in cadets from booths in turn. We've also gotten cadets from TV exposure, and working events like car shows and airshows. Public exposure is good stuff.

Don't forget retention!

Um...homeschooling shouldn't be about being locked inside.

Get out! Do more then just school and CAP. It will really help when college rolls around.

Eh, I think it was a joke.

But yes, being 'locked inside' is not a function of home school,
it's a function of how sheltered the family chooses to be.

There are plenty of home school kids that are out and about, and plenty of public school kids that are painfully sheltered.

How would you reach a super-sheltered public school kid? Especially if your school district won't let CAP have any access to the schools (like here).

I've got a problem with some san-francisco type school principals here. I have yet to speak to them personally, but I think the problem is just that many have the impression that we're rifle-toting types, instead of an educational organization with leadership cirriculum and community service, and search and rescue on the side. And yes, it was a joke.

Booths, grapevine, and churches work already. I think that fixing some misconstrusions of the principals myself will get things done.

I love it, you complain about stereotypes, i.e. "rifle-toting types", and then you stereotype the principals by calling them "San Francisco type".

If it's bad for them to stereotype then it's bad for you to stereotype too.

Just a little something for you to think about...

I'm working on it... We've all been guilty at some time.

I just talked to the principal of the middle school today. He's fine with us putting up materials, etc. No San Francisco types.

Actually, the irony is a bit misplaced... I was referring to a misconstruction as to what we do in CAP. Many people see the uniform and think that we're military, and many people don't like the military. When those two traits cross, we get something detrimental.

So after reading these thread when it started a week or so ago... I went out and did some research, and all of the links here, as well as suggestions, plus a little Googling, lead me to some great resources and contacts for my Region here in Southern California.

I sent out a general information email, and low and behold within a day or so, I was getting information requests from interests parents and kids.

Good work you guys, thanks for the heads up....

In my experience, offering to teach the AEX program in homeschooling groups is a good way to open a good dialogue with a homeschool group.

Don't forget to try the American Home School Association: http://www.americanhomeschoolassociation.org/ They'll have more information on how you can contact their members. Don't forget that each states has their own home school association and often times you can find additional associations in each region. A simple Google search online can help you locate these groups.

Interesting that you should mention this, as I myself am homeschooled. I agree that a large percentage of CAP is indeed homeschooled. One suggestion would be to recruit just one homeschooler, and use them to recruit other homeschoolers around them. Trust me, it works!