Using UTRGV skills in the real world
McAllen Anchor Park hosts ‘Amor’ farmers market Saturday with over 70 vendors.
Students and graduates from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley give back to the community with skills they developed during their college journey at McAllen’s farmers market, ‘Amor’ this past Saturday.
Margot Crocker, an early childhood education junior, uses her familiarity and experiences to sell hand painted greeting cards on her time off.
While being a student and an art teacher at St. John’s Episcopal School, Crocker considers herself “new” to farmers markets, but is “glad” she had something to do on the weekend.
“I get to be creative and do something I enjoy and make money from it,” Crocker said
Ricardo Ramirez, a UTRGV graduate, attends farmers markets not only to promote his business, Ramirez Law Group, but to provide the community with the knowledge of their rights.
According to Ramirez, the law group does Know Your Rights presentations, support fundraisers, community engagement, and popup markets.
One of the biggest challenges while implementing what UTRGVtaught him while studying business administrations was “overcoming the fear” of being able to get to the point “where the business actually is producing income to support our community, ourselves and our entire team,” he said.
UTRGV not only gave these graduates access to achieving a degree in their preferred area, but professors have helped some of these entrepreneurs to motivate themselves to be “more confident”.
Jackie Lara, a UTRGV graduate said her professors motivated her to be more confident
“I had a lot of good professors, and those professors helped put myself out there and just be myself,” Lara said.
Since starting her business, Lara was able to interact with customers that “forced” her to achieve that.
“[Farmers markets] really bring the community together… I had some customers here earlier that said they were from North Carolina visiting family,” she said. “ They’re like we don’t have this [in North Carolina], this is really cool that you guys have these.. [and] we take it for granted because we have so many. ”
