The Manitou Springs High School Robotics Club hosted a craft fair in the school’s commons and old gym on Dec.7 from 10 am to 2 pm. The craft fair is hosted in order to help the club fundraise money.
The process for planning this year’s craft fair started a long time ago, as there was originally supposed to be a craft fair during the 2024-25 school year. However, due to many factors, the fair was instead postponed until this year. “We made the decision to start trying to do a craft fair a bit too late into the year last year, so we weren’t able to get enough vendors,” James Devoy (12), a member of the Robotics Club, said. “So, we originally started some of the planning last year.”
Even though the club was not able to get enough vendors for the craft fair last year, they were able to get the craft fair approved for this year, ensuring to maintain opportunities for vendors who were interested. “We worked with previous vendors so that they were still registered,” Devoy said. “So it was just a process of getting more vendors for this year.”
Opportunities for vendors were open to anyone, even for those not affiliated with the school. The club did require a fifty dollar fee in order to receive a booth at the fair. Clubs, such as Art and Spanish clubs, were able to participate for free, while students received a discount and sellers who are based in Manitou had a fee of thirty dollars. This was the main source of profit for the Robotics Club. “We made around two thousand dollars as a Robotics Club from vendor fees, as well as additional things we sold from our table there,” Devoy said.
The club ensured to be transparent about what they were fundraising for and hoping to buy from their profits. “We will be buying motors with most of the proceeds that came from this,” Devoy said. “A lot of the feedback we got was that people really appreciated how we were transparent with what we are going to be buying with the money earned.”
Erin Gocinski, an art teacher at MSHS and the advisor for Art Club, was a vendor at the craft fair along with some of her students who are in the Art Club. Gocinski sold handmade jewelry along with Brad Borkowski’s handmade cutting boards. She found this to be a great opportunity for her and her students. “I thought that it would be a great opportunity to give students the chance to sell things that they make and have that experience,” Gocinski said. “I figured I could support students in finding ways to make money while also making money for myself too.”
While Gocinski sees this as a beneficial opportunity for students to make money on their own. She also appreciates how it supports the community. “It gives students exposure to
being able to make money on their own, but then also see other vendors who are doing this for a living, and see possible pathways for future opportunities to make some money,” Gocinski said. “I also think it’s a great opportunity for the community, because it brings people together and gives people the opportunity to buy local for holiday gifts that they were already gonna buy. And that’s always nice to put money back into the community.”
While many vendors were able to successfully sign up for the craft fair, some vendors encounter problems with finding the correct source to sign up for and pay for a booth, as there were scammers charging one hundred and sixty dollars as a booth fee for the event, causing them to lose more money while not actually being assigned a spot for the actual event. “We gave them a booth and made sure that even though they lost out on booth fees they didn’t lose the opportunity to sell,” Devoy said. “Every single vendor that had that happen to them did resign themselves up for next year. So even though we technically didn’t get any money from them, they did prepay their booth fee.”
Overall, the craft fair had forty seven vendors, and about three hundred people show up. The Robotics Club was hoping for a bigger turnout in visitors, but ultimately were satisfied, considering some factors that could have gone better. “We had some minor mishaps with the signs as a lot of them didn’t end up getting placed around town, which probably could explain the turnout of people we had at the craft fair,” Devoy said. “But even then, for a first year craft fair, we had a really good turnout.”
With Spanish Club being one of the vendors at the craft fair, Ingrid Perez, the advisor for Spanish Club, utilized the fair as an opportunity to fundraise money for both of the organizations that the club collaborates with. “One of the organizations is the unbound organization, which is the organization that we sponsored Moris through, and we have been doing that since March of 2022,” Perez said. “And then the collaboration with The Pulsera Project, which is an organization that helps out artisans in Central America by helping them to sell handmade woven bracelets and purses. All the money that is fundraised throughout those sales is sent back to the organization so they can keep helping those artisans with healthcare, groceries, medication and all those things.”
The Spanish Club worked to prepare for the craft fair for about a month, ensuring to create their own christmas card designs and preparing other aspects of what they were planning to sell. “The club members were able to design four styles of Christmas cards for this year,” Perez said. “The preparation process was deciding how many we wanted to print out in order to have enough for the Christmas fair, and get ready the display for the Pulsera Project.
Perez feels that the event was very well organized with many vendors, however she noticed that there wasn’t much of the public attending the event. “Maybe if we had had more advertising, it would have been more of a success,” Perez said. “Hopefully next year, there will be greater success, given that people already know that this is happening again, and they will come out and support the activity and the event.”
Perez also feels that there was a good variety of vendors. She noticed at least three clubs participating in the event, and saw many different types of items such as crochet items, jewelry, ornaments, food, and items made of wood. “There was a good variety,” Perez said. “I really enjoyed all the vendors that we had for this event, and I really hope it’ll be a bigger event next year.”
Devoy feels that the craft fair brings a lot of community and attention to the school, especially due to the fact that many vendors come from all over the city. “We had vendors from all over Colorado Springs and the adjacent cities,” Devoy said, “which means we brought a lot of different people to our school, bringing more attention.”
Devoy also feels that the craft fair is especially important to the robotics club as a resource of outreach. “Events like these are pretty beneficial to the robotics club for similar reasons of outreach. It brought people’s attention to our club, and we are one of the clubs who accept people from out of district,” Devoy said. “So it helps us by just bringing us in more money, which is something that the robotics team needs.”
Devoy says the club’s goal for this event was to just have people there both as sellers and visitors. They hope to grow in that aspect for next year’s event, which has already been approved. “We didn’t do as well of advertising as we would have liked to,” Devoy said. “So my hopes for next year with this event is that we have more people attend, because the larger the event, the more useful the event is for not just the robotic scene, but for the community of Manitou as a whole.”
Perez acknowledges the craft fair to be important for the students, schools, and districts involvement in the community, as she feels those connections are very important. “When it comes to supporting the district and supporting the schools, there has to be a bond between the community and the schools,” Perez said. “I think this type of event is a great opportunity to do that.”
