Keresley Centre’s Christmas Stall

In the last few weeks of term leading to Christmas, our students here at The Keresley Centre were working hard and preparing for Coventry’s Christmas Market as the centre had got a stall to run for the day.

The items the centre were selling were all hand made by the students in the centre, these items included book holders, Christmas decorations, hats, garden decorations, stockings and bird houses. After a lot of hard work and preparation Wednesday had finally come round and all of our students were full of excitement and were ready to get out into the public and sell their amazing creations. Our students arrived at the market at 9 am coming two at a time to run the stall and interact with the public teaching our students about social interaction skills, enterprise and help build their self-confidence.

Our first students to run the stall were amazing, talking to the customers and telling them about what our stall is for and what they knew about Shaftesbury as an organisation as well as making a lot of sales and handing out business cards for our centre, all in all the first group of students interacted amazingly with the public, handling customer care, handling cash and handled bagging items that customers had purchased. Our second group of students did just as well as the first, managing all of the above and all in all, every student did the centre proud, showing how sensible they are and responsibility and over all showing a great deal of maturity.

One of our members of staff that helped run the stall had said “The Christmas Shaftesbury Market Stall was brilliant! It was full of handmade goods, made by our students, it was a great experience where the students had the opportunity to sell their creations, interact with the customers and have this job experience for the future.”

Over all the Christmas market went as smooth as the snow that plastered the ground, with all our students making us and their selves proud.