Nepali Mela 2019 – summary of events and achievements
Nepali American Center (NAC), in collaboration with other local Nepali organizations, organized its third Nepali Mela (Fair) on Saturday June 29, 2019. It was an attempt to renew cooperation and coordination of all Nepalese in the Chicagoland area in an outdoor setting with specific emphasis on Nepali flavors (not sure what would be the right word here, tradition or culture?. Here were additional objectives of the mela::
To fulfil such ambitious objectives, we needed very effective planning and execution of the activities. Various elements considered for the success of the events were:
Participating organizations and volunteers: Since it was an outdoor event and dubbed as Nepali Mela, it should be open to all Nepalese and their friends. So, NAC invited all the Nepali social organizations and Nepali social clubs. Those included : (1) Nepali American Center (2) Chicago Nepali Terrain Society, (3) Newa American Dabu, (4) Chicagoland Tharu Society, (5) Chicagoland Nepali Friendship Society and (6) NRNA USA IL Chapter. In addition (1) Lali Gurans, (2) Dafne Football Club and (3) Himalayan Rhinos were also invited to join the team. Each of these organizations provided volunteers for help in organizing the event. The team also was very successful to identify and bring volunteers with special talents and commitments.
Event location and reservation: (Not sure if we need to provide all these details?) The first and foremost thing we did in the early stage was reserving the event site. We reserved Harms Woods area picnic spot initially in early March. But it was changed as per the suggestion from the Cook County Forest Preserve to St. Pauls Woods at Morton Grove area, which is more suitable for larger gatherings like ours, dubbed ‘special event’ by the Forest Preserve.
Activities: Food and vendor stalls, art competition, math competition, sports competition, Nepali handicrafts and arts shows, songs and music and DJ were the major ones among some other activities planned.
Foods: Several restaurants, volunteers from participating organizations and individual vendors brought and sold regular Nepali foods and traditional foods such as sel-roti/achar, pani/puri, momo, etc. to provide varieties of tastes to the attendees. We
received feedback that all the food catered by vendors were reasonably priced and was of good quality. Similarly the food vendors were happy to get reasonable sales of their items due to the large crowd gathered in the Mela.
Sports: Tennis (Mens, Womens and Mixed), Soccer (Mens and Children), Ping Pong (Mens, Womens and Mixed) and Volleyball (Mens and Womens) were organized. A large number of Youths from Dafne FC, Himalayan Rhinos and Lali Gurans members enthusiastically participated in these tournaments that were held on the weekends of June 8/9, June 15/16 and June 22/23. Children soccer was held on June 16. 237 (what is this?) youths (men and women) and a large number of children participated in these sports. Whole month of June weekends were exhausting to adults, but self-energizing and motivating to the youths.
Organizing sports activities participated by our youths in itself was a remarkable feat in the Chicago Nepali community. Furthermore, their enthusiasm and positive attitude was in full display during the games, meetings and the Mela event on June 29. It was them who became the glue to bring all of us together and unite for greater meaning of the Mela and display their potential and their character.
Music and entertainment: It was really great for us Nepalese communities living in Chicagoland to have very talented singers and musicians. Both men, women and children were able to put together a great variety of songs, music and dance performance to entertain the attendees. A great part of the time at the Mela was spent on their presentations to completely engage the Mela attendees and enjoy. Their talents and their interest to spend a significant amount of time for the preparation was highly commendable.
Arts competition: It was always a thorny and challenging aspect of event organizers to engage our children for their productive roles. (Didn’t understand the intention of this sentence, need to simplify a bit) Some very capable talents in arts and good decision makers of the committee members were highly successful to initiate arts competition from our young children of school ages. Twenty-nine children participated in the art competition, which in itself was a big achievement. Their arts and drawings occupied quite some space at the Mela and attracted all the attendees to see their skill and admire their participation. This was another major successful initiative at the Mela.
Math competition: American Society of Nepalese Engineers (ASNEngr) volunteers arranged for a math competition of school age children at the Mela. There were more than 50 students who participated in the competition with great interest. The winners of the competition were awarded medals and certificates by Honorable Congresswoman (from Evanston, Illinois) Jan Schakwoski. This activity was yet another proof of how much our children enjoyed these types of activities and how dedicated the mela volunteers were to hold such an activity. The crowd gathered at the ASNEngr booth was also a center piece of attraction.
Finance: Organizing an event of such a magnitude needs revenues to cover many different expected and unexpected expenses. The Mela organizing team put a fee of $5 online registration and $7 onsite registration fees per person. A reasonable fee for sports participation registration was also decided to be part of the registration revenue. Apart from this, the team also reached out to different Nepalese entrepreneurs and other business owners for support. The team also decided to levy a charge of 15% on business sales of foods and other stalls except those carried out by social organization groups.
We were successful in obtaining 5 Gold sponsors ($500), 2 silver sponsors ($300) and 15 other business sponsors to help the Mela. NAC and other organizing organizations were very thankful for their generous support, without which an event of this type could not be held in such a magnificent manner. Our finance volunteers were working to close the revenue/expense book and bring the financial status of the Mela to everyone very soon for everyone to look and understand it. It was the team’s goal to be accountable for the revenue/expense to our community and supporters and we will abide by our commitments.
With such great participation and support from everyone, we were extremely successful to organize the Mela in such a fabulous way. So far, we have heard many many positive compliments from the attendees that the event was well organized to bring all the Nepalese community members together to know each other and enjoy it. The display of unity from participating organizations, the energy and enthusiasm of our youths and children and the complete packages of works completed for the event by the volunteers was a great success and an example of itself what interest they had , capabilities they had and importance they emphasized for the sake of the community.
No words are enough to describe this event and the contribution of our volunteers. Those are invaluable things. A glimpse of this can however be seen from the pictures taken at various time at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1lbFTS5x1TkFLwqzlOT6tbpD7IWc_HPx0
Our thanks go to all the volunteers and participants and attendees for everything we did together. It would have been difficult if it was not many of you to reach out to our donors for sponsoring. In terms of participation, a total of almost 800 people participated. the fact that the participation of all ages and in particular our children and youths was especially remarkable and unique. It really gave us many insights, specially what was necessary to do in order to be completely inclusive rather than running the shows just by adults and old.
As we spend the last 4-5 months preparing for this event, our efforts paid off to present our dedication and service to our community whom we have vowed to serve. I believe that the success of the Mela was the true testimony of this, and I am sure you would agree with me. So far, I have not heard any complaints, but all positive comments. Let’s continue to listen to our community, whether criticism or praise, and continue to learn from that to be able to unite more of us and serve better in the future.
In terms of our unity, the Mela display showed that all the social organizations joined for the event with great enthusiasm. It was my understanding that this was the first time of the show of unity among all the organizations to our community in full display.
I truly believed that we always walked with discipline, brotherhood, and belief in our potential even if we were a small group and we shared the diverse nature of our community members. Since the inception of NAC, we have never wavered from our goals to serve our people the best we can and listen to their voice. Let’s continue this momentum even to achieve greater goals and uplift our community by including many great talents we were able to recognize from different activities conducted for the Mela in the future. I know and you agree that we are very successful in enhancing our current abilities from this.
It is hard to enumerate all the personal sacrifice of time and resources of many volunteers for the Mela for so long, but if we have to single out one person among all of us who was at the center of every activity that we did successfully, it was Ankur Sharma. He was always ready, always right on time, always respectful to each of us, but never tired, never forgot anything and probably never slept for the last few months. I am sure we agree that our community is so fortunate to have such a talent who is so dedicated to serve and knows how to bring other talents like the members in the organizing team as well. Let him be a role model for all others to follow what is the right thing to do even if that is hard to do.
Thank you!
