Mr. Smith is a Social Studies teacher who teaches a community activism class and puts on Spark every year, which typically is a pop-up event at the local festivals. This year, Mr. Smith and his students want to extend Spark from a one-day event to an everyday cafe. We got to sit down with Mr. Smith and ask a few questions about the opening of Spark.

Have you noticed Spark in downtown, Versailles?

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Spark Community Cafe has been in the making for about two years. The old Community Activism class was taught by Mr. Fannin, but following his retirement, Mr. Smith decided to step in and continue the idea of Spark. Spark originally was a coffee shop that was put up during the Christmas parade, right before school let out. Mr. Smith told us that the students fell in love with the sense of community at their seasonal cafe and that they wanted to make it more permanent.

We asked Mr. Smith, “Why did you want to teach community activism?” He sais, “In a democracy, people have to be active and that the young people in particular, who are under 18 think that voting is the only way that they can be active in their community and have an impact on their community, I don’t believe that at all. Young people need to understand that if they want change to happen.. they have to make the change happen.”

Smith thinks community activism is very important for teenagers. He wants kids to know that they do not have to be old enough to vote in order to make a change or make a difference.

Spark is mostly funded by private donations. Mr. Smith says that people may not always give money, but they make sure that Spark will have things like a stove or sink. They will also only be hiring a few paid positions, like cooks and staff roles like that. However, most of the workers will be volunteers. We asked if students would be working at Spark, and he told us that students would definitely be invited to work at the cafe but mainly volunteers from the community would be working there.

When it comes to advertisement, Mr. Smith has an entire committee set up for that. He says that he plans to have Spark Cafe in the newspapers, in the school, signs in town, and all over local social media. Their primary place to advertise is social media; you have not seen that yet but will very soon, like when they open, which he hopes will be in about 1-2 months.

You may be wondering, why the name Spark? Spark was the original name of the pop-up cafe that showed up around Christmas time. Mr. Smith and his students wanted to keep the name Spark when opening their cafe.

In conclusion, you can expect to see Spark in the next month or two as a new local cafe, a place to hang out, a place to meet, a place to build our community. Come out and support the new local Spark Cafe!