Ever wonder why your community doesn’t have a Farmers’ Market of its own? Well, that was a question buzzing around the minds of some of the residents of Southwest Edmonton for a long time before a dedicated Board of volunteers set themselves to work at making it happen!
Surprisingly few people know that Alberta Approved Farmers’ Markets such as the Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market are volunteer-driven, not-for-profit organizations. While they do receive some funding from the Government of Alberta and have access to the Department of Agriculture’s support and resources, the ‘heavy lifting’ comes directly from community members who are passionate about seeing a local, sustainable market in their area.
The SWEFM Board is responsible for the governance and operations of the Market including overseeing the Market Manager and the market rules/regulations, ensuring that the necessary funding is in place, approving and spear-heading all marketing and media initiatives, recruiting and maintaining an exceptional roster of vendors. This is quite the load for a group of volunteers, and building the market is a project that took over 2 years to accomplish. Now, as we wrap up our first season, we witness first hand the fruits of our labours and recognize that all this effort was totally worth it.
We did want to highlight the involvement and support that we received from a few specific businesses and organizations in our community, without whom this project could never have taken wing.
Our Sponsoring Body: The Terwillegar Riverbend Advisory Council
Our Market Host: The Terwillegar Recreation Centre (City of Edmonton)
Our Market Host (May/June): Lillian Osborne High School
Our Corporate Sponsors:
Our Donors:
We would also like to extend a warm and heartfelt thank you to all our volunteers, in particular the students of Lillian Osborne and community members who join us every week to help set up and tear down the market and to assist us traffic control and customer service. We could never do this without your help and engagement.
No comments:
Post a Comment