Reported by Karen Li
Posted by Karen Li
On May 18, we participated in the East and West festival held by the McKinney Public Library. At the event, we focused mainly on four things: selling jewelry, making balloon animals, face painting, and Chinese calligraphy lessons, all while promoting Aylus.
But before we could do that we had to first set up. This included putting up a tent, tables, chairs, a poster, a banner etc. Since we arrived pretty early, after we finished sitting there only a few people were present at the event so we spent this time going over a game plan to balance all four of the events that we had planned for this festival. In the end, we decided to reserve most of the space for face painting and balloons. As we predicted that the face painting would be the most popular event and could easily share space with the balloon animals as all they required was a table. We then put the bracelets and other assortment of jewelry under the tent and the calligraphy on the other side of the tent. This format was a smooth system that allowed us to balance four activities all at once. We also assigned each person to a specific event to make sure that there is always at least one person looking over that section. Once more people start coming in it was just a cycle of doing the job assigned to your section. For example, if you were with the bracelets and rings, you would have to watch for passer buyers and not only try and sell bracelets, but also tell people more about Aylus and our mission. For the balloon making the main part was obviously just making balloons and also interacting with the little kids. Similarly the face painting section mostly consisted of talking to the children and parents along with as the name suggests painting faces. During this time we also got to talk to a reporter from the Dallas Morning News, which was a great opportunity to spread our mission. We continued like this for a few hours before it was almost time for the event to end and they’re only a few people left at the festival so once it reached around 2 o’clock. We then started packing up all the supplies, such as the bracelets, rings, balloons, and face paints. Then we took down the tent and packed everything up.
This by far was probably the hardest part of the event as the sun was really bright and the temperature was also really hot. However, together as a team, we got through it and managed to pack up pretty fast, leaving the area perfectly clean just as it was before we arrived. This is really great experience as it taught us how to manage and lead as this was one of the few times we have had four events altogether, teaching us invaluable lessons about teamwork, cooperation and time management skills.
Volunteers:
Karen Li (Event leader): 6 hours
Bryan Zheng (Event leader): 5 hours
Charlotte Chen (Event leader): 5 hours
Zhi Wang Jon (Event leader): 5 hours
Keira Yang (Event leader): 4.5 hours
Keeli Richardson (Event leader): 4.5 hours
Jiahe (Joy) Tian (Event leader): 4.5 hours
Ellen Li: 5 hours
Zhenzi Gu: 2.5hours
Macy Ginnett: 3.5hours
Kathleen Jiang: 4.5hours
Chloe Lin: 3.5hours
Natalie Lin: 3.5hours
Kailang Du: 3.5hours
Amanda Ye: 3.5hours
Amiya Shenoy: 4hours
Kaitlin Lian: 4hours
Camilla Gu: 4.5hours
Ruishu Zhang (Isabella): 2 hours
Li Wan (supervising parent) 6 hours
Lin Xie (Nina) (supervising parent) 4.5 hours
Lijun Liu (Cindy) (supervising parent) 4.5 hours
Lei Gu (supervising parent) 5 hours
Xiangting Li (supervising parent) 5 hours
Jie Zheng (supervising parent) 5 hours
