My friends and I are part of what we call a “Society”, the name is based on a television program that was called Society about four women who are friends and face different issues but always have the ‘Society' to turn to for support and friendship.
We started the Society in July 2009 and it was driven by the fact that we live in the same city but we hardly ever see each other. So the plan was that once a month, one f us will host everyone else at their place and they will provide the main meal and everybody else will bring something like drinks, snacks, dessert, starters etc. We did that until Dec 2009 and it really worked so well because it allowed us to catch up on each other’s lives and just have fun together.
In January 2010, we had now established our ‘Society’ and wanted to formalise it and upgrade it, so we started off by thinking of a name to call ourselves and after countless arguments and brainstorming we all agreed on “Twenty-Somethings”. After that we worked on an events, travelling and hosting plan for the year. We were still going to meet at each other’s places but only every second month. Then every other month where no one was hosting we would do fun activities for example we attended Trevor Noah’s Comedy Show together, we had a mobile spa, we attended a Glamour movie event together, basically the list of things that we want to do is endless! We also suggested all the places that we would like to travel to and we currently have a travelling plan that will run until 2014. Other than these events we also have birthday celebrations where the birthday girl will suggest what she would like to do for her birthday and we make it happen.
In order to ensure that we can all afford to do all these things we opened a bank account under our group name and every month we all deposit a fixed amount of money and this money is used to fund all our FUN!
This may seem like an information overload but it’s become so easy to manage. I actually manage all our notes and document all the decision we make and every time we meet we go through the agenda first which consist of all the events, travel plans, birthdays and hosting information and then we catch up on what everyone’s been up to. One of my friends works in a bank and she tracks our bank statements and updates us on a monthly basis on how much money we have, who’s paid and who still needs to. The others are tasked with leading different events so that everyone is responsible for something.
It hasn’t been smooth-sailing though we have had to iron out quite a few issues. People used to arrive late for events and make feeble excuses and we decided that if you are late you pay R100 fine and if you do not arrive at all then you pay a R200 fine, this has worked out great because now everyone is on time. We also had quite a few unresolved issues amongst ourselves as friends so we had an honesty session where we had to tell each other what we liked and didn’t like about each other and the first time we did it, there were tears, but it really helped everyone air out their issues with each other and also strengthens the bond as friends. The second time that we did it was such a breeze because everyone was more mature about it, they could take the criticism and there were NO TEARS!!!
We always have fun when we’re together and I always learn something from the things we discuss. It also helps end the procrastinating on things that you have always loved to do but don’t make the time for; it really forces us to do these things. Being a part of the Society has really helped us all grow in so many different ways and it’s so liberating to know that we can discuss anything with each other.
Let’s all raise our glasses to “sisterhood”, cheers!
