A Tertulia of Our Own

Today was one of the bi-weekly tertulias held in the León Central Plaza (everyone here calls it the central park, but it resembles nothing of a park and resembles everything of a plaza, so I suppose it could be translated either way). Every other week the city shuts the main streets on the plaza and sets up tents for locals to sell their products. It is free to sign up – you just have to bring your own table.

I’ve been emphasizing the importance of the students actually selling their products with my teacher training group, so I spoke with City Hall and reserved us some tents for today. Three teams showed up, and everything really went great. The three groups had:

• Cebollita (chopped onions in vinegar with chile, used as a condiment)
• Coconut candy
• Iron-rich toasted corn drink mix

The cebollita is not the most creative idea out there, but they did an excellent job with their packaging and design. The drink mix I think is a pretty innovative product, and well received by the public, but they could work on their packaging design a little bit. The coconut candy was lacking in both departments, but their teacher is brand new and really loves teaching the class and seems to have her kids well motivated, so I consider it a great success.

For one of the teams sales started slow, but by noon they had sold out of their product. In fact, all three of the groups sold out and have cold hard profits in their pockets now. It was also a great opportunity for me to speak with the students and their teachers, in an informal setting, about finances, profits, and return on investment (the coconut candy group in particular had a very small profit margin, so we talked about how they could improve that). And truly, the real heroes of the day are the three teachers who dedicated part of their Saturday to their students.

I did rent tables and chairs for the event. For now I paid for it myself, but once my Kickstarter campaign closes I will reimburse myself with that money. I’ve raised more than my goal, so I am going to use the extra money for activities like the tertulia with my students. So thank you to my supporters.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1634483800/incidents-of-travel