Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 2:21:05 GMT -6
There are many of us who ask ourselves: how can I contribute my grain of sand? How can I, with my own resources, contribute to this global change? Well, let's put aside for a moment the discourse of the need for change in the political and economic system and focus on what is close, on the everyday, on what we have closest at hand: as you will see, the answer may also lie in the details. , in the little things, in everyday life... even in our own neighborhood! Download our free guide on Fair Trade here and discover this system of responsible and sustainable consumption. solidarity-store-fair-trade-oxfam-intermon Oxfam Intermón Fair Trade products store © Oxfam Intermón It is very likely that near your home, work, daycare or your children's school there is a solidarity store , an establishment that tries to change the rules of large commercial circuits based on ethical and supportive principles . And the thing is, if we had to summarize the objective of solidarity stores in a single sentence, changing the world from what we consume every day would be a quite precise and successful formula. But let's not stop with a simple headline; Let's delve into them and discover, in a short two-minute walk, what landscape the paths of solidarity commerce offer us .
Solidarity stores: the great power of small gestures Solidarity stores are the tip of the iceberg, the visible face of an extensive network of solidarity commerce that crosses borders in every sense. That's right, crossing borders and bridging distances between people from all places and conditions is one of the fundamental Albania Mobile Number List purposes of these solidarity networks. How do they do that? One of the keys that helps us better understand the role that solidarity commerce plays in what, in a general (and often not very specific) way, we call "changing the world" is the idea of responsible consumption , something very present in the mind of anyone who is in charge of other people, right? Buy healthy foods, maintain a balance in household accounts, avoid superfluous expenses so that all family members have their needs covered and equally enjoy the same opportunities... in summary, we would say that consuming responsibly is seeking for the good general of ours and the society in which we live . There is no need for great deeds or epic feats (our daily lives are already "epic" enough in many aspects...) to be responsible with what we consume.
The foundations of solidarity stores are based on this principle, which invite us to broaden our vision, considering the world as a whole as "our thing", as something that we must ensure with small daily gestures , from the very moment of doing the shopping list to choosing the store where we usually shop. Why a solidarity store? The main reasons why we choose one store over another tend to be basically three, although ordered and combined with each other in a different way according to our own preferences and needs: price, quality and variety . A store does not have to be the cheapest, nor the most stocked if, for example, it offers us good service and we are satisfied with the quality of its products. If we add to all this a fourth factor, that of responsibility, we already have the first reason to buy from supportive stores. But you may wonder, why are solidarity stores responsible businesses? Great question! In fact, we could specify it by seeing what some of the different types of solidarity stores are and what they do : Fair Trade Stores Fair Trade is based on standard principles that are shared by all stores dedicated to this type of alternative trade: Justice in business relationships . Creation of opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers . Transparency and accountability . Payment of a fair price to producers for their products.