Back on the rainbow: Foculizing the info center

Back on the rainbow it take some time to arrive and settle. The shitpit situation was devastating at beginning and i spent 1 hour for the first 3 days to have, good, clean shitpits and to make shure that everybody knows how to use them right. For my own and everybodies health this was the most important for me. On the third day Andrei, Galia and Greta arrived from Slovenia. We shared the stories of our travels and where happy to meet again. Andrei and me wanted to make a workshop about the project and the convergence. It was the day before the full moon celebration and there was a lot to prepare. So the rainbow family called out 2 hours of collective action after the foodcircle, when we wanted to make our workshop. We wanted to make a free box and a gift-economy corner in the information point at the entrance of the main circle, where everybody passes. There was a girl making an announcement in the foodcircle that she wanted to make a clothes swap box in the infopoint. We joined her and said that we wanted to do the same and even more with gift-economy. She was glad that we where willing to take over the announcement, because her english was not so good. There was a working group to set up the infopoint. This is a new concept that came up in the vision council, because it seemed like the welcome center was not enough to get everyone informed. As there was nothing like that yet, only an improvised tarp-structure on a tripod, we would need to create that space. Not only would this go well together with the preparation of the gift corner and our workshop, it is also one of the most important things on rainbow, that all the people know how it works and they can become active in the self-organisation. In a short talking circle it tourned out that i have the most experience with rainbow gatherings and structuring visual information and coordinating groups. So i was "foculizing" as we say on rainbow gatherings the preparation of the infopoint. Andrei suggested to quickly split up in smaller groups and that they self-organize what they have to do. We identified the tasks and immeadiatly the people got their hands on finding materials, re-building the tarp and collecting the information we wanted to put on the walls. After an hour we had a functioning infocenter and it tourned out that almost all the people involved in our action team where on a gathering for the first time, so they were learning a lot about the rainbow culture at the same time. After that i prepared our gift-economy corner with all the flyers and information material from communities and networking events. People where interested, but shy to get their hands in the flyers. So i asked everyone what they are looking for. It was very different of course, but i had a few tips, adresses, flyers and contacts for each of them. I enjoyed this job a lot. When it tourned dark i was really tired though..