Green the Season: Buy Once, Gift Twice

"Buy once, gift twice" is the slogan from our local Alternative Gift Fair held here in Evergreen, CO each year. It's not your typical craft fair with granny's doilies and knick-knacks. The event raises money for local, national and international charities through the sales of everything from organic pancake mix made by a local mom to blankets made from old sari fabric by HIV positive women in India. Every product sold profits someone in need. Here are a few of the things I purchased. (Family members should stop reading at this point!)

(I mean it. I'll keep all these gifts for myself if I have to!)

Shea Butter Soap and Peppermint Lip Balm from Bead For Life. Bead For Life is the organization that sells the beautiful necklaces, bracelets and earrings made by Ugandan women who carefully wrap recycled paper to make beads. Since we purchased those for family a few years ago, I went with their shea nut butter products. From the BFL website~

"Shea is known as 'Women's Gold' in Uganda, because women have traditionally used the money from shea to meet critical needs. Displaced by two decades of civil war, the 450 women we work with are slowly rebuilding their lives. The fair trade income they earn from shea nuts is used to buy food, improve their small farms, pay school fees, and create hope. These are women who have lost everything.  Yet they are determined to work hard to create a brighter future for their children."

This beautiful scarf from One Mother is made from old saris. One Mother works with the Tambaram Community Development Society, a non-governmental organization on the outskirts of Chennai, India to empower HIV positive women. The scarves and blankets are amazing - the colors and patterns - I am kicking myself now for only buying one.

The next group of women I met were sisters selling jewelry from Ethiopia. One of the sisters lives in Ethiopia with her family and brings the jewelry, beads and silver back and forth. One hundred percent of the profit goes back to families in Ethiopia. I couldn't resist buying a few!

Finally, I found some Divine chocolate for the chocolate-lover in my family. (Hopefully it lasts until Christmas!) Divine Chocolate is made with the finest quality, fairly traded cocoa beans from Kuapa Kokoo, a cooperative of smallholder farmers in Ghana. The cocoa is grown in the shade of the tropical rainforest, and slowly fermented and dried in the sun by farmers who take great pride in the chocolate company they co-own.

I wish I'd gotten to the fair more than an hour before it was closing. I could have checked off my entire Christmas list plus birthdays for next year.

If you don't have a local fair like this, I recommend the site Global Girlfriend which sells products from many of the same vendors (plus a whole lot more). While you're there, check out their Gifts That Give More section where you can purchase a less tangible gift that will mean even more to someone in need. For $15 you can buy a clean childbirth kit for a mother in a third world country or provide lights for students in rural Africa.

In times like these when we are all tightening purse strings, it feels right to spend less on frivolous gifts from big box stores, and more on meaningful gifts that will help people in need. Join me in helping a mother feed her children this year instead of feeding a CEO's already fat wallet.