April 24, 2013

Contributors: Brussels (LP)

Workshop: Social inclusion, job creation, economics/ Innovative socially inclusive initiatives

Local market inside the University campus to respond to the specific demand of students

We know that is generally not so easy for students to have access to sustainable food with their limited budget. For that reason, University with the help of a students group asked for a public support to set up a sustainable local market inside the campus. It started in October 2012. The market is a real success. Between 50 and 100 people shop there each week. The environmental coordination unit of the university ensures the project continuity because students groups (around 17 people) change each year.

This project is combined with activities to raise awareness of students about sustainable food: cooking lessons especially for students (on how to cook and eat sustainable food in their kitchen and within their budget), a stand at the market to taste sustainable food, ….

For the moment, educational activities did not yet attract as many people as the market, maybe because the price of cooking lessons is too high. They plan to try cheaper activities in order to gather more people.

They succeeded to propose competitive prices for sustainable foodstuffs thanks to several reasons:

– The group of students helps producers to install the market each week

– The market is inside the campus, so they do not need to pay rent

– For the starting year they have financial public support to pay communication, some activities, logistics for the inauguration day