Dear Community,

Wow! What can I say other than how blessed I feel about this whole project. It truly took a community AND some good fortune to make this event a success: from the seed funds from 24 Hour Citizen Project, to my friends who volunteered and helped, to strangers who bought passports and also did whatever was necessary to make this a success, to Festival International volunteers and staff who were tremendous, to the vendors who really gave it their all and were so easy to work with, to the Divine help in keeping the rain away!

Positives and Negatives:

The event took place on the Tuesday before Festival International. The street was blocked off from the morning so it allowed me to start setting up and getting ready without having to rush. I had one of my paid helpers not show up at all, so that put a bit of strain on me and the other person I hired to help, but Festival International staff came to the rescue and kept everything smooth and not rushed.

I met multiple times before the event day with the vendors to make sure they can visualize and truly understand what the day would look like, what they would need to bring, their responsibilities and for them to feel like they are all part of this team and project. I think these meetings were crucial.

I had all my signage, plate-ware, passports and stamps ordered and ready weeks beforehand. Glad I did, as some things still didn’t get to me until a few days before.

We were set up for NO CASH and only credit cards to simplify things BUT I should have tested the app (Square App) and the phones again the day off. Right before everyone got there, we realized the tap to pay option was not going thru, even though I tried it 2 days earlier. My ticket salespeople had to manually enter the credit card numbers which slowed down the process. Luckily it wasn’t a huge problem, but my goal was to not have lines at all for tickets. Lesson learned.

I also learned that I need to find better ways of getting the word out to those who might be interested in events like these. Quite a few people have approached me after the fact saying they wish they knew about the event. So I need better pre-event communication.

But overall, people thought it was great and want me to do this again next year. They loved that it was not an event with a large crowd, so I plan on keeping it at around 250-300 people next year.

Dear 24 Hour Citizen Community!

First of all, thank you so much for believing and funding the Global Bites vision.

More than ever, I think we need this to celebrate our local international communities, their food and culture.

The event is still scheduled for Tuesday, April 21st evening on Polk Street right by Parc Sans Souci.

Since right after I found out that we won the funding, I have been working on logistics and planning. I have had meetings with Festival International, LPD, Fire department, Coca Cola and DDA among others to keep things moving forward.

I have an amazing small but powerful team (Marissa, Faryal, Moussa, Geoff & Remil) who have been a huge help in advising and guiding me. We have been meeting regularly as well.

I have reached out to some communities and we are already at 9 cuisines! Was hoping for 8-10 and think I will stick with max 10 cuisines to make sure everyone makes money.

I will be ordering the passports (your entry ticket to this event) next week and am starting to order other products (passport stamps, plateware, signage) in the next 2-3 weeks.

Just wanted to give you guys a quick update,

—
Merci,

Sami Parbhoo