New farmer's market offers jobs, learning

Fresh fruits and vegetables arrived at a New Cassel church parking lot last Saturday. So did high school students wanting to work and families longing for affordable fresh food.

Tomatoes, asparagus, apples, onions, lettuce, escarole, eggplant and other produce came from eight East End farms to be sold at a new farmer's market run by teenagers.

The students came mostly from the Westbury school district. They raced to set up as customers crowded around the entrance gate at First Baptist Cathedral of Westbury.

Within an hour, the market almost sold out. It'll be open again Saturday and every Saturday through Nov. 19.

"It's bigger than I expected it to be and I can only see it growing from here," said market manager Traci Caines, who plans to order two to three times more food for upcoming markets.

More than just offering fresh food to residents of New Cassel -- which currently lacks a grocery store -- the market offers an opportunity for students to work and learn about food handling, customer service and workplace etiquette.

The market "teaches them some important business skills and on-the-job training," said Scott Woodson, a spokesman for Sustainable Long Island, which assisted with the market launch last week. "It gives them employment when jobs are not easy to come by."

Operated by the Unified New Cassel Community Revitalization Corp, the market offers training for paid and volunteer students in an area where nearly 17 percent of the population lives in poverty, according to U.S. Census reports. It also comes at a time when the national unemployment rate for teens ages 16 to 19 was 23 percent, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for August show.

For Kerri Carrillo, 16, a junior at Westbury High School, the Saturday market job is convenient amid her busy school schedule. Finding work has not been easy, she said.

"I applied a lot of places and waited for calls back," she said. "The market was the first one."

The farmers market is modeled on youth-staffed programs Sustainable Long Island helped open last year in Roosevelt and Bellport and earlier this year in Flanders, Woodson said.

Organizers said the market is equally important for the fresh food it provides in New Cassel, where, according to census data, 16.5 percent of residents do not have access to cars, which means they often rely on convenience stores for groceries or public transportation to get to supermarkets.

"This will be one of the first venues for residents in New Cassel to access fresh produce in their own neighborhood," said Town of North Hempstead Councilwoman Viviana L. Russell, who represents the area. A grocery store is coming to the area but is still under construction.

New Cassel right now is "not one of those places where you can walk to the corner and get produce," Woodson said.

New York Fresh Connect Farmers' Markets program and Bank of America each donated $15,000 to fund the market.