Meet MOFGA Volunteer Cara Oleksyk

Winter 2024-2025
By Betsy Garrold

Photo credit: Cara Oleksyk

Cara Oleksyk embodies energy. When it comes to running her shop/community space in Bangor, Maine, or volunteering her time at MOFGA’s Common Ground Country Fair, Oleksyk seems inexhaustible. Her Red Rabbit Bazaar, on Columbia Street in Bangor, is a great example of this. The shop doubles and triples as an art space, a place for story slams and clothing swaps, a music venue, and an outlet for her popular “Stitch ‘n Bitch” sessions.

Oleksyk first became involved in the Fair as a 13-year-old, when she wandered into the children's area of the event, then held in Windsor, and was welcomed as a volunteer on the spot. At 25 years old, Oleksyk was recruited to help with children’s activities, and she continued to coordinate the kids’ cosmos tent for the next 12 years. Oleksyk says that a lot of the best ideas for recycled art projects come from the kids themselves. “The web” is one of her favorites and is also a perennial favorite of the kids who participate in tying and untying its many knots each day of the Fair.

She met Lisa Wiley, a longtime compost and recycling volunteer, and her family while she was coordinating the kids’ cosmos tent. Oleksyk says, “She and her family were fun and easy to hang out with. They were the first real Fair friends I made outside of the children’s area.” After Wiley's untimely death, Oleksyk says she could feel her watching over them as they worked. 2022 was Oleksyk's first year co-coordinating the compost and recycling area. She says that working with a team really breaks down the idea of "I need to do this myself" and changes it to a "we can move further together." Oleksyk calls it a mycelium network of connectivity. There is no hierarchy and Oleksyk feels that she "gets more than she gives." Oleksyk also wanted to give a shout out to MOFGA Fair staff for their constant support and encouragement.

April Boucher, Common Ground Country Fair director, says of Oleksyk, "I'm incredibly thankful for Cara. She sees a need and applies her authentic friendship and intellect to help team members and groups accomplish projects that have a big impact. She steps up to challenges and takes them in stride. With her can-do attitude and leadership, Cara, along with the compost and recycling coordinator team and volunteers, recycled over a ton of renewables, separated out 100 yards of compostable materials, and reduced our Fair environmental impact by diverting 77% of Fair waste from the landfill."

The mycelium reference runs deep in the MOFGA community. For example, Oleksyk spent one summer as a teenager working at Happy Town Farm in Orland, Maine, with Paul and Karen Volckhausen, long-time MOFGA volunteers, and later reconnected with them at the Fair. Oleksyk says, "It’s like a big family that you get to see once a year at the Fair. It's like coming home and allows you to be very present and in the moment. You get to reconnect before you settle in for the winter in Maine." Winter is the season that we all recharge our energy for the coming year — energy that Oleksyk is happy to share with her MOFGA and Bangor communities.