It's a small world

The second Resource fair of the week, I attended the Butler County Head Start Health and Safety Resource Fair in Hamilton on Wednesday. This event was designed to connect parents whose kids are in the Head Start program with various resources in the community.

You would think that all Resource Fairs are the same--but that's definitely not the case. This resource fair had some significant differences from the Dayton resource fair we attended on Tuesday.

First of all, the organizers of the fair had enough sense to move the event inside when the temperature fell below 60 degrees. They must have realized how difficult it would be for vendors to communicate with families through chattering teeth. And for that, I am very grateful!

Secondly, this event was obviously smaller, and had a much homier feel to it. I arrived to find my booth squeezed into a snakelike line of tables in the church's gymnasium. On my left was...surprise: the Community Crisis and Counseling Center! As you know, I volunteer with the Rape Crisis Program, which is housed in the Crisis Center, so it was nice to see a familiar face. But as I would discover, familiar faces were all around. On my right I met Dan, and AmeriCorps State member with the Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio. Turns out, Dan and I had met once before during our Miami days in a creative writing class we had both taken about 3 years ago. (It was quite a memorable class--for our final project the class held a poetry reading on one of the university's metro buses. How could you forget that?) As I surveyed the rest of the room, I recognized each of the 20 agencies represented, and I could identify some of the staff and volunteers in attendance, as well. Even Jessica, a fellow AmeriCorps*VISTA member from the Miami Hamilton campus, wandered by! It felt good to greet people by name; I'm certainly feeling more at home among these agencies.

The third difference: yesterday's resource fair served a hot lunch--a FREE hot lunch. At the Dayton resource fair, we only had ballpark food to choose from, and at $3 a pop, hot dogs just didn't hit the spot. All of the 60+ families and the 20 organizations present were fed a delicious lunch before the event was over.

One thing that was not different from the Dayton fair was the noise level. It's so difficult to compete with the noise level in a gymnasium or any other hollow, concrete space. I suppose some things just can't be helped, and it was certainly better than battling the elements outside.

Another difference with the Dayton fair was the volume of children running around. Now, I like kids--don't get me wrong. But when you're explaining the OBB to a frazzled parent trying to hold onto 3 squirming pre-schoolers, you have to wonder how much information is really being retained. Next year, Head Start could do better by offering free childcare through the end of the event.

The final difference between the events was that the Head Start fair-goers were required to get vendors to initial a sheet of paper after they had stopped by our booths. I think the goal of this task was to make sure parents visited every booth and got as much information as possible, but the reality was that most parents were only half-listening to our spiels. I don't blame them! They were just trying to get as many initials as they could before their child had a complete meltdown on the floor. When all is said and done, this practice seemed a little demeaning to me; the set-up felt contrived and patriarchal, further reinforcing an often hidden power dynamic between service provider and consumer that I'm not particularly fond of. The event could improve by allowing parents to visit the booths that they need most, and giving them ample time and space to do that, distraction- (or kid-) free.

It's the little things that make resource fairs a success. I was glad to stay in my home county for this one, and I'm certainly learning a lot about what goes into quality events. Maybe by the end of this term of service I could work as a resource fair/event planner....oh the possibilities.