Methodological woes

I'm having a bit of methodological difficulty and wonder if anyone can help with suggestions from their own experience or something they've read about.

I'm conducting a piece of research where the aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of government's attempts to tackle poverty since a major political event in 1999. This is to be a qualitative piece because the research sponsors want to 'capture people's voices'.

I'm using focus groups to encourage people to discuss how their experience of poverty has changed since 1999 but I'm struggling to get people to engage with that period. They're far more interested in getting nostalgic about their distance past rather than focusing on the last 7 years. In fact focusing on such recent history has been a struggle, since people seem to have the impression that 1999 was longer ago than it was! I've tried to identify issues or events that would jog people's memory, but 1999 was a bit of a bland year so while I've identified things people recall, I've not hit upon anything that makes people say 'Yeah, I remember what I was doing when that happened'.

I wonder if anyone had any suggestions of how I could get round this problem? I'd be especially interested to hear about techniques people have used successfully or relevant journal articles. Thanks for your help!

Crossposted to: sociologists, psychology, grad_psych