Trench Town Trade and Investment Fair

This is a little glimpse of my November 2013… pictures and more captions to follow! :)

WELCOME - Can't believe this is happening! :)

The Trench Town Trade and Investment Fair took place on Saturday November 16, 2013, and it was one of the most spectacular events I’ve ever had the privilege to be part of.  When I signed up to volunteer in Jamaica, I definitely didn’t think that I would have the opportunity to plan and coordinate something like this.  As I’ve explained in previous blogs, the Agency for Inner-City Renewal works in community development, with a specific focus on entrepreneurship.   With that came the opportunity to introduce The Rebirth of a City through Transformation of Inner-City Communities.   It was exhausting and the AIR staff is sick, tired and/or drained, but from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. on November 16^th, we transformed Emancipation Park!

Meeting to seek interest from entrepreneurs 

But before, we had to organize a church service and a press conference, in addition to soliciting exhibitors and individual entrepreneurs, seeking sponsors for funding support and mobilizing the community, churches and schools to volunteer, attend and participate in the coordination of the entire event.  Programs had to be written, invitations had to be sent, outreach and advertising definitely had to be completed, meetings among meetings were scheduled to secure arrangements and ensure that everyone was on the same page! Every logistical issue that could come up, DID, such as too many tents and not enough exhibitors to showcase their product/service to not enough tent space for the amount of sponsors interesting in supporting AIR; searching for sponsorship to feed the 30 volunteers and 100+ school children; realizing the night before that we didn’t appropriately secure parking arrangements at the park; and finding entrepreneurs with market ready products that could be displayed (mind you many individuals don’t have an email address and so they were individually called or we had to drive around communities to personally ask if there’s any interest). 

Strong Women of Trench Town - table of market-ready products

Trench Town Ceramics & Art Centre

Church Service November 10, 2013

On November 10, 2013, the Trench Town Multi- Purpose Community Centre on Collie Smith Drive and Fifth Street was converted into a church service.  It was important to put on the service as receiving community respect and support is essential in any initiative, event, project an organization plans for.  And so, individuals from Trench Town and the broader community in Kingston came out to participate in prayers and songs that sent out a clear positive message about transforming Trench Town from an inner-city community that is plagued by violence and fear to one that has potential for producing bright and experienced people with talents and skills in agri-business, music, sports, writing, IT, (to name a few), therefore helping to contribute to Jamaica’s socio-economic well-being.  It was quite a nice Sunday service but shortly after it was finished, it was back to setting up for the press conference and fair itself. That meant that we had to grab our To-Do list and it was back to printing brochures, information materials and pasting labels on the folders for the press kits, sorting out any finishing touches and hoping that the press conference runs as smooth as possible.  Again, the press conference was part of a broader market campaign for the fair, which included television coverage; mention in the local newspaper; and live radio broadcast so that the message about the Trench Town Trade and Investment Fair was heard by as many different audiences as possible, and to confirm that a positive outcome was coming out of Trench Town on Saturday November 16^th.

Church service - kids performing a skit

Church service - kids performing a dance

Press Conference November 11, 2013

With the church service and press conference past, attention was fully turned to organizing and tightening up preparations for the grand final, which was taking place in less than a week now. Needless to say, emotions and pressure were heightened.  By this time, we still needed to fill three 30X30 tents with individual entrepreneurs, call sponsors to seek their contribution so we could pay our invoices, recruit volunteers to help on the day, ensure school principals in targeted communities allowed 10 school children to carry their community flags to the park, and also physically being at the park the night before to ensure it was set up appropriately. And these tasks mentioned here only scratched the surface of what we actually had to complete that week!  

Park day before - Friday set up

Tent/park set-up day before

So it is now Saturday and my day begins at 6:00 a.m. by escorting company sponsors and entrepreneurs to their respective tents to set up, meanwhile continuing to organize the park according to  he floor plan.  By 11:00 a.m. the park was open to the public and the program began with guest speakers, key messages by the supporting sponsors and an awards ceremony to recognize those who completed various training courses in business management in greenhouse farming.  At the same time, a marching band was coming

Marching Band

through the opening gates to entertain us with great music and dancing, and soon to follow were the school children with feather banners with the names of their respective communities to be placed in the park.  By the afternoon, the park was filled with interested spectators, entrepreneurs were displayed their products, companies offered samples, financial and other sorts of service information and materials 

Community Feather Banners

and non-profit organizations and foundations spoke about community development projects taking place in inner-city communities.  It was the time for networking and developing business deals, which I’m happy to report that a few entrepreneurs negotiated preliminary 

deals with companies and community foundations during the event. 

More tents, more displaying

Lunch Break at 4:00 p.m. getting some R&R

Evening musical performance - phenomenal singers

The night wasn’t complete though, without entertainment! We had musical performances from various artists and genres from Trench Town and surrounding communities. By 10:00 p.m., we were thanking the audience and participants for attending, packing up the tents and clearing out the tables and chairs.  I can honestly say that by that time, it felt bitter sweet!

Although the days were long and we spent most our evenings either at a meeting, at the office or just getting home in enough time to sleep, for one day we transformed Emancipation Park into a hub for all that is great about Trench Town.  We celebrated the remarkable creativity and talent that Jamaica has to offer – a successful event!  

To top it off, I was part of the radio show, Roots 96.1 FM the following week to give my perspective about my experience being part of the planning of the Trench Town Trade and Investment Fair.  AIR’s founder, along with one of the main musical artists at the fair and I explained AIR’s goals in assisting the Trench Town community to own their development by using their creative entrepreneurial skills to rebuild the community towards economic growth.  Jamaica cannot sustain itself in its current social-economic state and we used the radio show as an opportunity to inform listeners that these types of events would be a continued effort to push communities to take the initiative towards making those necessary changes.