This year I've become deeply convicted about the way my purchases affect people around the world. This is a great service the blogosphere has done for me. Without the intonations of conscientious bloggers from all over, I probably wouldn't have become sensitized as I have. Julie regularly posts about the need to buy fair market products. Thanks to her, I posted twice on reports on unfair labor practices in the news. Scot has been blogging about fair market coffee as long as I've read his blog. Recently Sonja posted about her favorite place for buying fair market jams and coffee. This week Josh wrote about his decision to incorporate traceability into all his Christmas purchases this year.
So I've been following links, reading the ways others are attempting to break out of the cycle of consumeristic gorging. Here are some of the sites I've found and have been given:
Make Something Day
Buy Nothing Christmas
Ten-Thousand Villages
Global Exchange
Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates
Green Mountain Coffee
Advent Conspiracy
Kiva
Cause Depot
Heifer International
Heartbeats: Networking Women, Developing World and Minority Artists
Trade Craft (UK)
World Vision Alternative Gifts(UK)
World Vision (US)
Grassroots Alternative Gifts (UK)
Fair Trade Federation
United Methodist Committee on Relief Gift Catalog
I have a request.
- If you're feeling similarly compelled, please let me know in comments. Maybe we can encourage each other in this difficult endeavor.
- Send me links to any websites or information that will help all of us to make better purchases from the justice standpoint, or be better informed about the practices (labor, evironmental, etc) of specific companies (good or bad). I'll add to my list on this post- which will be linked in my sidebar.
- Make your own post about what you're doing, and let me know so I can link to it. If you don't mind sending your readers my way, I'd appreciate all the help I can get on this!
Friends who'll be trying to incorporate fair trade and sanity into Christmas this year:
11 comments:
Thanks for posting this... I've been thinking about this very issue today, and posted some thoughts.
Cindy,
We go through this together every year. I'm still in denial. Christmas is not just around the corner. Noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
I know Grace! I can always count on you to comiserate with me! Oddly enough, the stress of normal life seems to be pushing my Christmas concerns a little farther back in my mind- or farther down on my worry list, right now.
thanks for the links. i didn't even know about some of those. so i'm on my way to check them out now.
sure thing, Josh. I'll be eagerly awaiting updates on how your traceability purchasing works out.
Cindy,
Christmas has always been an interesting event for me. Let me put in this way - Say you invite me to Ruby's birthday party. I come; enjoy the cake, ice cream and coffee (fair trade of course!) as well as pony rides and wearing the birthday celebration hat. Then... when it is time for the gifts, I take my gift and say to Ruby, "In honor of your birthday, I got myself this wonderful (whatever)!" Or, "Ruby, in honor of your birthday, I got my child this gift - you can look at it, but I am taking it home with me." Not a lot of Birthday cheer in that is there? We do the same thing with the birth of Jesus. It's his birthday - yet we give ourselves and others His birthday gifts. Something isn't right here.
One year while we were in seminary, a family sent us money to buy our Christmas gifts with. The same year, another family sent us a card saying that "two goats, 4 rabbits and 6 chickens were given to Heifer International in our honor." My kids cannot tell you the first thing they got that year in the way of presents under the tree -- but they still talk about the goats, rabbits and chickens.
I've asked all my family to give to charities and relief agencies instead of giving to me. Or at very least, to buy fair trade items. Will let you know how it works.
That's the news from the "Friendliest City in the South."
Ken- thanks for coming by and for your comments. We haven't bought anything from Heifer Inter. for Christmas before (outside of church programs), but your encouraging words help motivate me in that direction.
Cindy,
Just stumbled on your blog today. Fair Trade Federation has a list of online shopping resources. There are a lot of great items and the warm & fuzzies from knowing you've bought socially responsible gifts that contribute to the global community. Link is here: http://fairtradefederation.org/memol.html
thank you Deanna! I'll add that link. very helpful!
Cindy,
I've been catching up on my reading and this post caught my eye. Thanks for the links. I would love to pursue these great ideas. Our families aren't really on the same page yet. I don't think they'd appreciate having a gift given in their honor. Yet, they all complain about how hard it is to buy gifts because none of us really NEEDS anything. Sigh... Perhaps someday. At any rate, I'll keep moving in this direction.
Mary- that's what's so difficult, isn't it? I sometimes hear of extended families in which everyone is of the same mind, they all pray together, play together- I sure don't have that. This year, to be honest, it works for me and my sister because we're both in tight financial situations at the same time. Sad that it takes that for us to admit that we don't need to be buying all that stuff anyway.
It's a process for all of us.
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