Eco Exeter's Community Market A Huge Success

by Bob Montgomery

South Huron District High School's Eco Exeter Team hosted their first Community Market at the high school this past Saturday.

Teacher and Eco Exeter team leader Amanda Keller says they applied for a grant from the Sunset Community Fund and got some help from the municipality of South Huron in organizing the community market. “The idea was that they would have a market that had vendors that were selling eco-friendly and/or locally made products and we had some money to buy products for our own table as well.” “So the kids picked out items such as silicon cups and glass containers, stainless steel straws and bamboo straws, silicon freezer bags and this fall they started contacting vendors.” Keller says they had 23 vendors at the event. Two more couldn't make it because of the weather.

Keller says the 23 vendors were selling everything from honey to hand-made leather goods. A couple of young entrepreneurs were selling things they had welded out of metal, some different wooden signs, there were some homemade crocheted items, some stained glass and they had vendors lined up all the way around the large gym at the high school. The kids started advertising the event on social media and word spread from there so they were very happy with the support they got from the community.

They lose a lot of valuable members every year as the grade twelve students graduate and move on, but every year the grade ten and eleven students take the baton and carry on. The new grade nine students get on board very quickly and this year they even have a couple of grade eight students that want to help out. This year, as they have in the past, they've made the transition seamless.

Keller estimates they had close to two hundred people at the event on Saturday and she says they're already starting to plan for a second Community Market next year and several of the vendors said they wanted to be part of it.

Photo courtesy of Eco Exeter