Enterprising learners go green for Christmas

A group of learners from Coleg y Cymoedd were selected to take part in a ‘’Pop up Shop’ initiative to showcase their Festive products. In preparation for the event, the learners who are studying on the Vocational Access course at Coleg y Cymoedd discussed the goods they thought would be popular and agreed on a ‘Recycled and Eco friendly’ range of products.

The group, joined by their peers from the course spent a busy few months leading up to the event, producing goods to sell at the Pop Up Shop.  The shop facility, based in the Cardiff Capital Shopping Centre was made available to the learners to promote enterprise; as part of a project co-ordinated by Cardiff University, Big Ideas Wales also supported the event with Role Model Sharone Williams helping learners to engage with the public and develop their customer service skills. Enterprise Skills and Employability Manager, Lesley Cottrell said “The effort of all the learners and staff certainly paid off on the day.  The shop looked absolutely amazing and the learners completely engaged and did a fantastic job, their sense of achievement was tangible, the experience couldn’t have been more ‘’real’”.

Throughout the day, the learners were challenged to put their commercial skills to the test, engaging with the Christmas shoppers to sell their products; which included Christmas decorations including stunning Christmas trees made from pallets.  Another range of their goods on sale at the Pop Up shop included, tasty chutneys made from produce grown at the Green Zone and delicious fresh honey from the bees, which are also kept at the Green Zone, Ystrad Mynach campus.

Course Tutor, Dorian Adkins said, “This has been an amazing opportunity to showcase the skills of our talented learners, who we are very proud of.  Although a group of 20 learners covered the sales throughout the day at the Pop up Shop, many more learners have helped ‘behind the scenes’, producing the items to be sold.  The atmosphere has been amazing and our learners have gained valuable skills throughout the project”.

Staff also involved include, Diane Jones, Emma Chakrabati, Kerry Hartnell, Cath Richards and Samantha Thomas

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