How to start an Autism Club for Auckland University

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Hello, at this point, I am a first year university student and I am aiming to officially start an autism club for next year. Admittedly, it probably won't be called an autism Club probably something instead like "Neurodiversity club" in order to make the naming a bit less awkward. However it will act to cater for autistic people and other members of the Neurodiverse community.

It has come to my attention recently after seeing the amount of social isolation people on the Autism spectrum go through even at university that forming a club like this may be warranted. Just to provide a place for people interact with one another, meet like-minded people and just be free to be yourself. If this initiative is successful it will become the first Autism Club at Auckland University.

At this point, I am dealing with a number of hurdles however as I am trying to get more people involved in forming this club. I am convinced there is a need for it, however due to the stigma surrounding autism and how much it is under the rug, it is hard to identify the people who may be interested in this club and discuss forming it.

To deal with this problem I am trying to think up a number of ways to deal with the problem. First me and a number of my friends announced at the start of lectures how we plan to get this club underway and to contact us if they are interested. The reasoning being that their may be one or two autistic people who may be interested in this idea.

This initiative did not work so well. So instead afterwards I instead asked friends to relay messages of starting this autism club, to their friends to ensure the message is spread around and people take notice. This strategy proved to be a bit more successful and so far we have 12 or so signups of people saying they are interested. However we need 20 in order for this to be fully underway. This has left me in a bit of a twist on how to approach this. And how to spark interest in this club whilst also retaining my own credibility credibility and being conscious of what is being discussed.

At this point I am also trying to set out a model of what may work for how to manage this club. I am thinking at this point, our events will be formatted by having weekly meetups in which people can come along, have some pizza, play games, eat food, draw and be themselves. Ideally I would want an environment open to interaction but not requiring it of all those who show up.

I am also thinking on how the executive and functioning of the club would be laid out. At this point I would like there to be a gender even executive. This is done in order to ensure that female autistic people feel comfortable attending these events whilst also helping to create an environment where people feel better able to express any welfare concern attendees may have.

At this point though, I feel I am debating on how best to move forward. I want to be able to attract more members to start this up, organize better and format on how best to manage this club. I imagine some of you may be allot more experienced then me so what are some ideas you may have?

The choice of venue is important, perhaps a good place to start is identifying one. So maybe talk to the editor and/or staff of Craccum, the student paper at U of A (if Craccum is still going) to brainstorm possible venues and ideas about venues, times, reaching other AS people who may be interested.

Good on you S, I wish you great success with this, though it may be slow to take off and require some patience during the initial months.

PS

Maybe write an article for Craccum with a contact number at the end for people who are interested. You could do this under a pen name at this stage, which might be prudent. There will be some negative feedback, some naysayers, (this always happens) though that's just how it goes, ignore them and keep going.

Excellent initiative, Shahunshah!

Did you contact Autism NZ on this? They've been very helpful with me setting up something similar in Wellington

Keep up the good work, bud!