Rice Festival

UNFORTUNATE
The Rice Festival is a festival that celebrates diversity among Asians. It is also a fundraiser that raises funds to assist single Asian women who are homeless by providing education, housing, vocational assistance and other supportive services.
This year’s festival was held in the Gwinnett Place Mall. The event was scheduled to start at 11:00 but when we arrived around 11:30 they were in the process of moving the event indoors. Unfortunately the organizers waited until the last minute to move the event indoors and so we actually decided to leave, shop a bit and come back later. We returned about 1pm and noticed that the food vendors were not established yet and we would have to wait approximately 20 minutes before they were ready to serve. We were here to support the fundraiser for the Asian American Resource Center so we really wanted to purchase lunch from the Asian vendors and decided to wait a bit longer.
We went into the mall and noticed that there were tables and vendors set up to offer information about community services and there were also various items such as toys and snacks available for purchase. We decided to sit down and enjoy the entertainment while we waited for the food vendors to prepare their food. After the initial dancer performed, we were asked to wait for 20 minutes until the next performance took the stage. My husband and I decided that we would get something to eat in the meantime. The event vendors were still not prepared and the food court did not offer any viable options. We actually ended up leaving the event just before 2pm.
I think that it is a shame that the organizers did not have the foresight to make sure that there were enough food vendors and that the event was set up indoors in advance of the scheduled start time. There were two event food vendors, and a Mediterranean food truck vendor that actually left before 2pm. The choices were very limited and the event just seemed very disorganized.
The good news is that there were numerous energetic young people out volunteering for this event. They seemed to outnumber the attendees during our visit but hopefully this trend reversed as the day wore on.
Hopefully next year’s event will be better planned and better attended.