This Strawberry Mansion resident created a market to serve her community

Aiisha Harris and her friends felt restless.

It was the middle of lockdown, and the group of friends had been creating different items: pottery, candles, shirts. But they had nowhere to showcase their work. So they created their own market: Summer Souq.

For four years now, Harris has been organizing an annual summer market in her Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, featuring female vendors. For Harris, the market has been a way to fill multiple voids she sees in her community.

“I really wanted specifically to give women a place to flourish,” Harris said.

As a stay-at-home mother of seven herself, Harris is familiar with the stigma that mothers who don’t have traditional jobs confront. The market is one way to combat that and give women in her community a creative outlet and financial stability.

“I’ve met so many amazing street vendors in the past four years, just women that have been doing this in the city for 30, 40 years,” Harris said. “Those are the women that I want to highlight.”

Summer Souq (a souq is a marketplace in northern Africa or the Middle East) has also been a way to reinforce family and community structures. During the pandemic, especially, Harris saw the way that having nothing to do affected both kids and parents in her community. She hopes the market will help provide a productive outlet and nurturing gathering space for children and adults alike.

“My sincerest intention is to bring back the combination of business and family,” Harris said. “Our society, especially in the Strawberry Mansion section, there are so many opportunities for creativity to be nurtured properly, but we have to combine family fundamentals with discipline, integrity, sincerity, compassion, friendship, respect. That’s very important for me in order for us to do our part as a community, so we can do our part to affect our city overall.”

Harris, who is Muslim, said she also wanted to ensure that the market would be a welcoming space for the Muslim community — meaning no alcohol or smoking, and an overall family-friendly environment. That being said, it’s an open space for all, and several of the vendors are non-Muslim.

“The beautiful thing about that is that I am a 33-year-old daughter of a Baptist pastor in the city of Philadelphia,” Harris said. “I’m not an isolationist. I love unity amongst color, creed, religion, culture.”

Featuring 22 vendors this year, Summer Souq will be held Sunday, July 2 from noon to 5 p.m at the Mander Playground in Strawberry Mansion.