The End of Local Fairs

The sound of my alarm Monday morning meant only one thing: time to wake up and hit the ground running. And until now, my feet haven’t stopped moving, bringing me to the farthest corners of my municipality and back, by bike, bus, motorcycle, and friendly nature of those who pick me up trying to hitch.

The bad news is that the rest, the break, is only temporary. The big push, the granddaddy of all fairs is still to be had. Tomorrow, Villa el Carmen will be proud to present its Third Annual Feria de Emprendedurismo, and although all the teams now are qualified, there is still some scrambling to be done, due to a last minute change.

The good news is that after a two week period all 7 of the schools I work in have had their local fairs, some for the first time. Not all group presented top notch work, and there were some notable disappointments. Disappointments that made me question was I really wanted here in this community. But those disappointments tend to be forgotten when seeing the relative success on a grand scale: over 45 student groups handing in business plans and presenting a years worth of work, schools finishing its first full year teaching the emprendedurismo program, and the kind words said by teachers, principles, and students about what the class meant to them. More on that after my last competition in a few days.

Last year, wanting to make an early impression on my new community, I took the planning process by the reigns, but this year I took a different approach to planning the competitions, by acting as a facilitator more than decision maker. After all sustainability is the name of the game, and as I recently found out, I will be the last business volunteer in the community. So I used this year as a test run for how the teachers may perform and act at next year’s competition, sans Sam. Once all together, I just asked the questions that needed to be asked, and let them (my counterparts) discuss and decide. It let to some awkward, long pauses in debate, but by the end of the hour it was all planned out, without a single decision made by myself, at individual school level, and at the municipal level. I’ve been running around in large part to help prepare the students for the fair and revise their plans, attend competitions, and relay messages. Oh yeah, and to help change the date of the competition two days before it was suppose to happen. Long story short, we changed the date due to scheduling conflict. Almost, immediately after we made the change, we found out the event in conflict was suspended to a later date. As a result, we lost a sponsor, two judges, and a workshop for the winning teams on how to make a PowerPoint presentation (for the regional competition). The event in conflict was the national science fair, and national Ministry of Education couldn’t get their shit together, or in more eloquent terms, failed to prepare adequately. So their incompetence side railed my competition. But so is life. Hopefully these extra days will help the students to prepare and better their projects, right? We’ll see tomorrow! Pictures to come, as well as a recap of my last round of planning competitions.