The following commentary is intended to help further Rural Policy Reserach Institute's (RUPRI) mission to "facilitate public dialogue concerning the impacts of public policy on rural people and places." The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy analyses of RUPRI, its collaborating organizations and institutions, or its funders.
PLEASE HELP US BUILD THE RURAL VOICE BY FORWARDING THIS COMMENTARY TO OTHERS OR ASKING YOUR LOCAL NEWSPAPER TO RUN IT. (It may be photocopied or retransmitted in its entirety but not otherwise reprinted or transmitted without permission.)
December 3, 2004
Giving Alternatives
By Thomas D. Rowley
Pity the poor mailman. As if the onset of winter weren’t enough, with biting winds, sulking sun, and falling snow, now comes the onslaught of catalogues, flyers, and promos by the backbreaking score. Yes, it’s the holidays. So many choices…so little need.
Yet for all the choices delivered by our faithful couriers in blue, what many of us really want are alternatives—alternatives to the mass-produced, environmentally degrading, soul-numbing “gifts” that sing to our wallets their siren song.
Alternatives, you say? Why here are a few.
Rather than hopping in the car and schlepping out to the mega-mart on the bypass, how about slipping on the walking shoes and stepping downtown to buy from home-grown, locally-owned merchants (assuming there are any left in town)? Yes, you might pay a couple of bucks more, and you might have only three red wagons to choose from instead of fourteen, but you’ll get some exercise, chat with someone who knows about the products she sells, and keep more of your hard-earned dollars in the community where, Lord knows, they are needed.
If walking is out and surfing is in, paddle over to www.SuperMarketCoop.com. The market is a project of the nonprofit Rural Coalition, an alliance of organizations working “to build a more just and sustainable food system that brings fair returns to minority and other small farmers and rural communities, ensures just and fair working conditions for farmworkers, protects the environment, and delivers safe and healthy food to consumers.” Not a bad set of goals.
At the website, shoppers will find products from small farmers, cooperatives, and rural businesses here and in South America. The goods range from holiday wreaths and maple syrup from Maine to sweet potatoes and quilts from Mississippi, from Native American art to Guatemalan tapestries to—my personal favorite—Wisconsin “Family Farm Defender Cheese”.
Debra Livingston, Coalition Deputy Director, says the whole idea grew out of NAFTA, when small farmers in the United States and Mexico realized that none of them would benefit from the agreement, and so developed an alternative “people-to-people market.”
Up and running since 2000, the supermarket generates about $10,000 a year in sales, most of it coming during the holidays.
“Our products are very unusual,” says Livingston. “And the majority of the returns go back to the community. It’s just another way to make sure small farms continue to thrive in this economy.”
A third alternative is to buy gifts that don’t really go to the recipient, but rather to someone really in need. Alternative Gifts International (www.altgifts.org) grew out of the efforts of Harriet Prichard, the children’s director at a Presbyterian church in California in the 1980s. Now an interfaith, international nonprofit, the organization helps set up alternative gift markets at more than 350 churches, synagogues, schools, and businesses each year here and abroad. It also “sells” gifts on its website.
Since incorporating in 1986, AGI has raised more than $15 million for the “empowerment of the world’s poorest citizens and the preservation of the planet’s environment.” It does that by offering donors a chance to buy food, supplies, livestock, training, you name it, in honor of someone on their gift list. For twenty bucks you can supply schoolbooks for a class of ten Haitian students (instead of dropping it on a remote-controlled doodad that will end up broken or forgotten before the kissing starts on New Year’s Eve). Fifty-five dollars will send a baby llama to poor Bolivian farmers. Forty-eight will provide one year of care for a Chinese orphan.
The rationale, as AGI puts it: “Because so many of the world’s critical needs today are going unmet. Because of our need and capacity to give generously. Because Uncle Harry doesn’t need yet another silk necktie.”
There are, of course, countless other worthy alternatives. All that’s needed to avail ourselves of them is a little imagination and a little gumption to buck the trend. The results are well worth it: gifts that help people (those who receive them, those who sell them, and those who give them), gifts that keep on giving.
Which, come to think of it, is kind of like the first Christmas.
--
Copyright 2004, Thomas D. Rowley, RUPRI Fellow
This and previous columns can be found at www.rupri.org/editorial
|
|
