Bloomington Multicultural Expo

Dear Civic Engagement Stakeholder members,

The Bloomington Multicultural Expo (BME) needs our help! On Saturday, October 10th of this year, four festivals will come together to create a new, exhilarating “Expo” experience! The I.U. Moon Festival, Soul Food Festival, Festival Latino and International Village will integrate their activities at Bryan Park from 11am to 4pm, and by doing so, they are expecting well over 1,000 participants! Students always play an integral role as festival participants but this year we hope that our student volunteers can help, too!

This volunteer opportunity seems perfect for students and provides a wonderful educational experience. I am hoping we can help support BME by funneling some of our student volunteers to their Expo during the event day. I serve the BME planning committee and, as a communication bridge between our group and theirs, I would like to propose a possible system for recruiting Expo volunteers from our Stakeholder group. See what you think:

1. What if four Stakeholder members each signed up to have their I.U. volunteer program support one, individual festival with their student volunteers? That person would then be able to recruit their student volunteers most easily, and help to fill their 11am to 5pm volunteer needs.

2. Each festival site at Bryan Park will have unique volunteer needs – some need many and some need few; each has just now come up with their final volunteer numbers and volunteer job descriptions;

3. Student Volunteer shifts will be in 2 hour slots from 11am to 5pm;
SO – are there 4-5 of you who are willing to sign up your students from your volunteer program to help with this year’s Bloomington Multicultural Expo?!
If so, here are the totals that they will need. (Please note that community volunteers will also participate in this event and might contribute to these numbers. But, the more student volunteers they receive, the easier this will make their total recruitment effort!)
Let me know the festival site for which you would like your volunteer program to sign up:

Moon Festival – 24 volunteers
Latino Festival – 4
Soul Food Festival – 35
International Village – 0
Expo Children’s Activities – 8
Misc. – photographer, clean-up, etc.

We can talk more about the specifics of this at our next Stakeholder’s meeting on September 23rd but I would love it if you could tentatively provide sign up feedback now so that BME knows how IU student volunteers might be contributing.

Email speastart@gmail.com if you are interested in volunteering for this event!