Health Fair Reflection Paper

Even before this assignment was introduced, I was fully aware that this class was to be mainly focused on community health promotions and the importance of it. I was aware that we were going to learn about the fundamentals of health promotion and how it was done in different parts of the world. But what I wasn’t aware of was that the entire class was to partake in promoting good health in our own community via the Health Fair! When the assignment was first introduced, my initial thinking was that working in groups was something I personally never really favored in the past. Then there was the actual interaction with the community, specifically those who are at the flea market. I have been to the flea market before and I was particularly worried about the language barrier since most of those who go to the flea market were Spanish speakers; let alone none of our team members had any Spanish background other than basic high school training. Not only this, but the whole idea of promoting good health to a community with only over a month’s worth of preparation and learning health promotions from scratch was all a bit too overwhelming for me. Normally, this would have been the kind of class I would have dropped right away. I’m glad I didn’t because the Health Fair was definitely an experience I would never forget.

When our team got together I elected myself to be the recorder since I was pretty good at taking down notes and whatnot. But as everything progressed, everyone’s “jobs” didn’t seem to matter. Everyone, including myself, just wanted to be more involved with what should be displayed on our booth, what activities we were going to have, and what questions should we be asking. What surprised me the most in working with this group versus other groups was that each member’s level of involvement was very high. I suppose it had to be high because the Health Fair was a big deal and we only had a short time. But every single person in our team had their opinions voiced and everyone was very comfortable with each other. Initially, I had the great idea for having awareness bracelets to giveaway because it would’ve been a great fashion statement, especially for adolescents. But it didn’t happen because of the lack of funds and the time constraints to get the bracelets done. Ultimately, I ended up designing a lot of our booth’s visuals including the “got fruigetables?” banner and the very simple idea of crossing out images of junk food and highlighting various fruits and vegetables. I wanted our visuals to be very straight to the point, but very colorful at the same time. I also had a friend who is a very talented graffiti artist design our colorful “5-A-Day” sign. Our team was definitely on our feet the whole time, but it couldn’t have been well executed without our leader, Uche Uzegbu. I honestly couldn’t ask for a better team leader than Uche. Her enthusiasm and permanently bright aura is what kept the group driving. Her effectiveness as a leader accounts from her being a friend to everyone, first and foremost, and being a boss to no one. And I definitely enjoyed making the song with her for our demonstration literally the day before the Health Fair! That was my friend and team member, Lionel’s idea. I helped a little bit with the lyrics, but it was mostly Uche’s creation. I just played the live music. And I must say, that that was well executed as well! This was one of my more memorable moments from the Health Fair.

On the first day of the Health Fair, it was all a little nerve-racking. We were in a hustle trying to get the booth together on time. I admit, at least I felt like we weren’t completely prepared for what was going to happen in the next couple hours. I personally was not exactly ready to interact with the people. And also, everything seemed so unorganized. Not all our giveaways were there because the person who had the later shift had them. But as it all commenced, it wasn’t that bad at all. It was a rocky start, but I think we adapted and tackled every problem we stumbled upon. For instance, our word scramble activity. We were having a problem with people having trouble unscrambling even the simplest words. Instead of dropping the whole word scrambling game, I suggested we put several scrambled words on there and people could just unscramble the ones they were able to unscramble which worked out wonderfully. The next day, another team member