Events coming up, Interview with Giselle Cornejo, Founder of The Lisbon Family & Community Fair
by Richard Lucas
About
This free newsletter has information about community events in Lisbon, plus guest posts, interviews. We now have 1657 subscribers. If you want to help with the project or contribute content, please contact me. If you want to reach my audience with an announcement about a project of interest to them. Please get in touch.
Tuesday, May 9th
Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club - #14 @ Titanic 6:00- 8:30 PM
Hosted by the legendary Gui Sancho.
Signup and details here and here
Saturday, May 27
The Lisbon Family & Community Fair 9:30 AM to 4:45 PM @Goethe Institute Lisboa
Details and signup to workshops here
See the interview with Giselle Cornejo below.
Tuesday May 30th
Open Coffee Lisbon #15 @ Startup Lisboa , 9:00 to 11:00 AM at Startup Lisboa
Sign up and details here
Tuesday, May 30
Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club - #15 @ Titanic 6:00-8:30 PM
Signup and details here and here hosted by Richard Lucas, Founder, That’s me.
Full details of both events are at the end of this newsletter if you want more details. Inclusive, tolerant and introvert friendly - we welcome all who welcome all.
Interview with Giselle Cornejo, founder of The Lisbon Family & Community Fair
Richard: Please introduce yourself
Hello! My name is Giselle Denise Cornejo. I am an entrepreneur helping to get new ideas for local community businesses to help grow their services and products. My vision is to create a way for businesses to grow toward their local community, minding the course of trade and helping to get closer to those who need their services.
Richard: What is the vision for The Lisbon Family & Community Fair, and what will happen? What problem is it aiming to address?
Giselle: The vision of The Lisbon Family & Community Fair is to incentivize collaboration between different parts to bring knowledge to our community about other disciplines, trends, and products. We will have several workshops for men, women, and children during the fair. And some of them will be integrative for the family to participate together. With this, we aim to address the possibility of helping people get information about how to improve their lives ( lifestyle, professional, body, and mind), providing a space and time to reconnect with themselves and their own family and connect with new people.
Richard: How is it better/different from existing ways for families and community groups to get together?
Giselle: At the moment, we observe local people need more time to grow new connections, and the willingness to change careers, learn new skills, and at the same time raise a family is just too exhausting. Creating a space where people can get further information, create a new network, and simultaneously bring their family with them can help clean up the pain or guilt of not expediting time with your beloved family. We believe that if we can have a space where we know we can spend some time for ourselves and, in just a few minutes, can get back to our child or partner to do something together, like engaging in dance activity or craft activity together, we are spending time together doing something that can stimulate the creative mind and build stronger connections between us.
In this sense, we want to work from the inside out with clients, visitors, and consumers to bring them to a world of a day where life can be in harmony and peace to encourage them to learn and to integrate with their closer group, their families. And at the same time, create new connections with new people around.
Richard: What are the main challenges?
Giselle: The main challenge is communicating the idea. Some have been able to get fast on the track and understand the benefit of this type of event, and some others have had some difficulties as this is something new for some communities but already existing in other countries.
Richard: For The Lisbon Family & Community Fair: to work, you need to have people who create content and activities and people who come to the event.
Giselle: Yes, indeed. Therefore it has been essential to connect with some people like Alenka Kocjancic and Olga Kirillova to form a team to lead the idea toward something realistic. We have contacted inspirational people who have been engaging in the creation of an exhibitors group and connecting with exciting brands. We have had meetings with them, and we have had group and individual sessions to help them create their profile for The Lisbon Family & Community event, now having this preparation, we believe that their own experience and professional sessions can help to provide their clients that moment of growth and motivation to get them further in the path they are choosing.
Besides this, it is crucial to ask the help of local and expat groups to help us spread the word and use some platforms to promote this and other events.
Richard: What will you regard as a success?
Giselle: People willing to come with their families, try the workshops, and ask more questions about how we can help them; that will be a significant success. We need to put worries aside, don't feel that we will judge, and when we leave that state of mind, there is always a way that another person can bring us closer to what we want to achieve. People are mentors and bridges; we learn from experiences and, most of the time, people are ready to help somehow. Of course, the decision to walk the path is up to us.
Richard: How are you funded?
Giselle: At the moment, we are investing our time to structure the event; we are helping each other by committing to the event with the help of exhibitors and volunteers. We have been offered a place to start this event which is a significant opportunity for the event to exist.
Richard: How will you cover the costs?
Giselle: Currently, some have a small budget to start, and others still can't participate in the payment of costs. We are getting some donated materials from Facebook groups, and people have approached us to help.
We want this fair to grow and have a more significant impact on people, so we are looking for people who may be interested in investing time and covering costs to develop the fair and help it to spread to different locations in Portugal.
Richard: How can people contact you to ask more questions or help?
Giselle: That will be very nice if people would like to ask questions or want to help.
They can reach us via family.communityfair@gmail.com or
https://www.meetup.com/lisbon-newcomers-welcome-group/events/293344642
https://www.instagram.com/family_and_community_fair
About Open Coffee
Everyone at Open Coffee gets a minute to say 1. who they are, 2. what they do, 3. What they are looking for, and 4. how they can help other people. After everyone has introduced themselves, the rest of the event is free form networking. Free, fun, and useful, it is popular for those who are looking for clients, investors, co founders, employees, a job or just inspiration. Start the day with positive, high energy people who can be bothered to be up for an early start. We are getting another Open Coffee group going in Ericeira in May. Contact Richard or Olga for more information. If you want to get a group going in your city, or university, or to help with an existing event, get in touch here https://forms.gle/hjQUMyFap5K8yo8y9. We will do our best to help you get up and running.
Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club
We start on time, and have to be out by about 20:30 so don’t be late. This "Lisbon Newcomers Welcome Club" gathering is for people who are new to Lisbon or want to welcome them, and increase their number of connections. The first meetup was held November 2021 and since we have welcomed 1600+ people to these events. Each event creates new bonds between newcomers to Lisbon and those who have been here for a while in a simple, fun, yet effective way.Many thanks to the team at Titanic for the venue and support. Our events are open and welcoming to people from all backgrounds. You will be surprised to see how many different nationalities come together at these events. We have a structured first sixty minutes with icebreakers aimed at making things easy for introverts and for people to connect with one another. Then participants are welcome to hang out and socialise as they wish after this part of the meeting is over.
Free Community Announcements If you have a community initiative you want to share or announce, let us know in advance.