Car­ol Quash

Stu­dents of Bish­op Anstey Trin­i­ty Col­lege East re­cent­ly had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to mon­e­tise their cre­ativ­i­ty while giv­ing back to their school com­mu­ni­ty at the in­sti­tu­tion’s an­nu­al Christ­mas Pop-Up Mar­ket.

Stu­dent ven­dors show­cased their prod­ucts in the Cheryl Greaves Au­di­to­ri­um un­der the su­per­vi­sion of co-or­di­na­tor June Al­fred and her team—Josana Belfield-Mata­moro, Lieske As­sam-Graves, Na­tal­ie Dun­can and Ja­son Valere.

“This is the sec­ond year of host­ing the mar­ket. Stu­dents pay for the use of one ta­ble, and there is al­so an en­trance fee to ac­cess the mar­ket. The pro­ceeds go to the Benev­o­lent Fund, which sup­ports stu­dents in our school com­mu­ni­ty who are in need. Stu­dents keep all the prof­its from the prod­ucts they sell,” Al­fred ex­plained.

The young en­tre­pre­neurs of­fered a wide range of items, in­clud­ing food and desserts, condi­ments, juices, snow cones, phone ac­ces­sories, jew­ellery, plants and cro­cheted items. Through­out the day, a steady stream of pa­trons—fel­low stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents—sup­port­ed the ini­tia­tive.

Al­fred told Guardian Me­dia that the pop-up mar­ket was ini­tial­ly in­tro­duced by a core group of Bish­op Anstey High School East teach­ers to first-year stu­dents. This year, the ini­tia­tive was ex­pand­ed to in­clude Trin­i­ty Col­lege East and Sixth Form stu­dents.

“We no­ticed the tal­ents of our girls—some cro­chet­ing dur­ing lunch breaks, oth­ers shar­ing baked treats at snack time—and then dis­cov­ered they were be­ing paid by their peers. We want­ed to high­light and nur­ture those tal­ents,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Al­fred, the event al­lows stu­dents to trans­form ideas in­to tan­gi­ble prod­ucts and ser­vices, while learn­ing to man­age pric­ing, in­ven­to­ry and cus­tomer in­ter­ac­tions in a pro­fes­sion­al set­ting. The ex­pe­ri­ence al­so helps to de­vel­op com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, cus­tomer ser­vice ethics, prob­lem-solv­ing abil­i­ties and en­tre­pre­neur­ial con­fi­dence.

“The stu­dents are gain­ing a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of con­cepts like prof­it mar­gins and re­turn on in­vest­ment. More than just a fes­tive ac­tiv­i­ty, the pop-up mar­ket strength­ens com­mu­ni­ty bonds and builds con­fi­dence as stu­dents are sup­port­ed and cel­e­brat­ed as emerg­ing cre­ative thinkers and fu­ture busi­ness lead­ers,” Al­fred added.

She not­ed that while the in­au­gur­al mar­ket aimed to host 50 stu­dent ven­dors, par­tic­i­pa­tion grew to 64 stu­dents this year, re­flect­ing the ini­tia­tive’s in­creas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and im­pact.