BLOG: A Glimpse at an Eagan Funfest Ambassador's Calendar

Fellow Eagan community members,

What EXACTLY does an Ambassador do?

Since the July coronation, our Eagan Funfest Ambassadors have been very busy representing our community in a variety of activities. These include the first outing to the Hopkins Raspberry Festival coronation and ball. This offered our ambassadors the opportunity to introduce themselves to not only the Hopkins ambassadors, but the many other visiting royalty from neighboring communities, a group that is referred to as the “sparkle section,” and includes other newly crowned ambassadors. Our ambassadors interact with and build great relationships with these other representatives not only during their current reign, but often life-long friendships. These events build self-confidence, listening skills, interaction skills, poise, and social graces in the young representatives. They stand in front of large groups of people and introduce themselves to let everyone know allows more people the opportunity to learn about the July 4th Funfest event.

The very next day, our ambassadors participated in the Hopkins parade, another great opportunity to bond with other ambassadors they met the night before and to meet new ambassadors as they walk from float to float introducing themselves before the parade starts. A big tradition for ambassadors is the trading of buttons. Each community makes up buttons representing their festival and the ambassadors bring these buttons to parades and coronations to trade with other ambassadors. This allows everyone to promote their own festival and get the word out to many communities. Over a year long reign, an ambassador can accumulate a nice collection of buttons to display and save.

The Eagan Market Fest is another way for our Eagan ambassadors to be involved in the community, they assist with everything from handing out flyers at the gate to helping with games for the kids or just walking the Market Fest grounds helping the elderly do their food shopping and answering questions about Eagan. This is a great way to interact with the residents of the Eagan community and let other youth know about the ambassador program.

The beginning of August, our ambassadors attended National Night Out. This outing, as many of you know, is an excellent way to interact with our community leaders, council members, police and fire fighters plus many Eagan residents.  The Eagan’s Fireman Ice Cream social is another event which offers our ambassadors the opportunity to visit and understand the key role our local firefighters play in our community, and by attending this event help support our local firefighters.

Another parade our Eagan ambassadors attended this summer was the St. Paul Park Heritage Days. St. Paul Park’s event offers the traditional mud stomp where the ambassadors dress up and, you guessed it, stomp in a mud pit. This is a highlight for the representatives, and they have so much fun, I encourage you to see the posted pictures on this website to fully appreciate it.

The latest parade the Eagan Funfest Ambassadors participated in was at the Halloween Capital of the world, the Anoka Halloween parade. Our ambassadors chose to dress up as fairies, and they did an excellent job representing the Eagan Funfest in this fun and spooky event. The ambassadors also did a local Halloween event by attending the Eagan Halloween Hodgepodge at the community center handing out candy and goodies to little ones.

There are so many events more events that the Eagan Funfest Ambassadors attend annually, I have only highlighted a few. The ambassador committee is proud of our new ambassadors and the fantastic job they are doing at representing the Eagan July 4th Funfest. 

The next Eagan Funfest Ambassador coronation will be Monday, July 8, 2013. I encourage you to consider becoming involved with the program and find out just how much fun it is to be an Ambassador. Watch for more updates coming soon and follow the Ambassadors with their blog posts throughout the year.

Sincerely,

Kathy Hansen

Eagan Funfest Ambassador Committee Member