After attending a Village Homeowners Association meeting, we knew we wanted to sign up to be representatives for Mallory Square.  We talked with one of the officers about social groups in The Villages and were advised to find out more about this process at the Villages Recreation Center. Our first step was to place a notice in the newspaper announcing that a social group would be forming and advising residents to “contact Lanny and Liz.” We also posted a notice at the mail boxes.  When we received feedback from interested residents, we invited them to our home to talk about forming a social group.  Twenty-two people came!

We all discussed what we envisioned and how to let other people know about the group.  One of the ideas was to print flyers and distribute them to all residents inviting them to a dessert and coffee social at Coconut Cove.  Six teams rang doorbells and handed out flyers. 

The calls and emails started coming in. Great!!  We were getting a good response. The emails and phone calls continued to come in and continued to come in.   Wonderful!!!  Five days before the event and, yes, the emails and phone calls continued to come in.   Panic!!!!    Coconut Cove was not big enough to hold everyone!  Fortunately, we were able to change the meeting place to Laurel Manor where there was more room.  Unfortunately, we had to notify over 200 people of the change. Two hours before the meeting the phone calls were still coming in.  Ultimately the number of residents who attended was over 300. We had more desserts than we needed and not enough drinks.  

To determine the types of activities residents wanted, we asked all attendees to fill out questionnaires about their areas of interest. We also asked for volunteers to lead the activities.   Volunteers did come forward, some to lead and some to help.

We had the questionnaires tabulated and sorted. We picked a slate of enthusiastic Board of Directors and found some great chair people. We found the perfect web master to set up a site for us to communicate with everyone in the social group. 

Our officers, chair people and other volunteers helped set up the second monthly social meeting – a pot luck dinner – on May 25 at Lake Miona Recreational Center.  About 200 of us ate, drank, socialized, organized, and played a mixer game. 

We have created a structure for our Social-Lites group and put things in motion.  Now it is up to all those in the social club to volunteer, to participate, and to have fun . . .