Colombo City Centre CAN Weekend Market Women’s Day on Sunday

National TV Channel Derana/Triad Advertising Founder Varuni Amunugama Fernando

Mrs. World 2020 Winner - Caroline Jurie

Foundation of Goodness Representative Madhimalar Muralitharan

Wijeya Newspapers Social Media Head/ Daily Mirror online and Hi online Editor Rishni Weeraratne

DFCC Senior Vice President - Consumer Banking Gillian Edwards

Founder of The Creative Isle Initiative Keshini Suraweera

A power house of esteemed female personalities, will rally together to create awareness, celebrate and support creative women entrepreneurs at the Colombo City Centre CAN Weekend Market Women’s Day edition on Sunday 7 March at 3 p.m.

The CAN weekend Market organised by the Creative Isle in collaboration with Colombo City Centre is a platform created to support micro entrepreneurs severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It houses entrepreneurs from across the island every weekend, giving them a place to market their products to urban consumers in the heart of the City. The creative products featured are useful household necessities from jams, cordials, chutneys and pickles to vegan delicacies, encouraging modern consumers to refocus on traditional healthy food options, such as jack fruit flour, jack fruit milk powder (a substitute for coconut milk), manioc sambols, kohila (Lasia) root in brine, Moringa sambol to name a few. And it will help consumers move away from imported high-calorie snacks to home-grown tropical fruit-based coconut chips, banana chips, and jack fruit chips, which are healthier options to introduce to the modern consumer. It is a genuine attempt to reintroduce natural food enriched with tropical goodness to present generation, who have opted out of these options in the past due to difficulty in cooking and preparation. CAN market vendors have innovated and made cooking easy; dehydration food technology is used to preserve the natural goodness and taste whilst offering convenience to those with a busy lifestyle. Various tropical beverages like king coconut soda, soursop soda and soursop teas, homemade wines and many more artisanal food varieties will surely delight your taste buds.

The Creative Isle initiative supports makers of great products and great ideas from around the island, and also encourages recycle and upcycle initiatives. 

Handmade jewellery using recycled wastepaper and plastic is just one of the many sustainable fashion products available every weekend. Eco-friendly home and lifestyle products, which are good for the planet and great for communities, will also be introduced. The market also features an exquisite collection of rush and reed, handloom and beeralu lace, hand crafted by a collective of female artisans, who use natural, traditional materials and age old techniques from rural communities in Matara and Mannar.

Creative Isle founder Keshini Suraweera states that the theme for the program will be, ‘Rise by lifting others’. The Colombo City Centre as a CSR initiative has opened their doors to this initiative, which is also supported by philanthropist Muttiah Muralitharan’s Foundation of Goodness, TV Derana, Scope Cinemas, Antyra and UNDP.

Entrepreneurs and artisans, young and old, gather at the Colombo City Centre CAN market, every Friday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

The CAN Weekend Market is an excellent platform for creating opportunities for B2C as well as B2B business. The CCC-CAN market will also warmly welcome Mrs. World Caroline Jurie and all the successful female personalities who have come forward to support this initiative this Sunday.