Twill be the season to go shopping

Those of us who celebrate Christmas may be feeling the shopping season drawing close - or at least be seeing the shops start to put up their Christmas lights - but also may want to feel that their money is doing some good for more people than just their friends and family. So, who can recommend a Fair Trade retailer? Let us have your suggestions, and TBAT will put together a list and post it nearer to Christmas.

It occurs to us too that in these difficult times, many people are short of funds. However, quite a few Slacktivites have mentioned that they enjoy crafts. We were wondering: would anybody who knits, paints, crochets, sculpts or otherwise makes nice things be interested in creating stuff for each other? Our idea was that people seeking handmade gifts could offer to provide the relevant crafter with the materials and postage costs, which would hopefully come to less than the price of a gift, and the crafter could donate their time and hopefully enjoy having a project or two on hand. Does that appeal to anyone?

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Comments

[Deird, who makes jewellery]

Awesome idea - but I think in my case, the postage costs people would have to pay to get stuff from Australia would probably come to more than a normal gift...

[Bay]

If you know anyone who is a writer or roleplayer, I've found a fairly cheap and yet immensely personalized gift is to order a commission of one of their characters. If you head to deviantart, you can find a decent artist willing to work for cheap.

[MercuryBlue]

I hate saying this, but I'm not playing. My schedule goes work school sleep work school sleep work school sleep work school sleep work homework sleep homework housework sleep housework homework sleep and back to work on Monday. I'd love to join a Slacktiverse gift exchange but I have not got time for the things I am already committed to doing. (And there's a story eating my brain that will require hours upon hours upon hours of research. Argh why do I do this to myself.)

I'm giving serious consideration to having my gifts to family this year be Kiva gift cards. That way they can spend the money how they like, if they like, but first it does some actual good in the world.

Deird: I dunno, I mailed a pair of earrings to Australia the other week and it cost me the same dollar seventy-five as it does to mail a pair of earrings to elsewhere in the US.

[Deird, who can't guarantee you'll *like* the jewellery...]

Really? Well, if anyone is willing to brave shipping costs, I will happily make earrings, necklaces, bracelets...

[Deird, who takes photos]

For instance:
here are some earrings

[cjmr]

That sounds lovely--I wish I had time to make things for people (I do knitting and quilting) but I can't even get down my to-do list faster than new things appear on the bottom right now.

[Jenny Islander]

Deva Lifewear is a '70s communal thingamabob that survived. It provides jobs to local people who work at home: bona fide cottage industry. Not sure how this ties in to Fair Trade, but at least you can be sure that the cloth wasn't cut and sewn in a sweatshop. devalifewear dot com.

Products: Mostly relaxed, durable cotton at-home wear for men and women (some unisex) with a limited selection for children. Also all-occasion wear for women in a broad range of sizes. I love their full circle skirts. I've been doing business with them for years and have never been disappointed.

[Kit Whitfield]

http://www.pebblechild.com/ makes lovely toys for children and provides decent jobs to women in Bangladesh.

http://www.goodgifts.org/ is a wonderful place to make donations in people's names.

Also, I knit toys. My speciality is cats (I've got a great book of cat patterns), but I can do other animals as well - I just knitted a slug, for instance, and I've got another pattern book on the way - so if anyone wants a knitted creature, let me know. :-)

[Kit Whitfield]

Oh - here's a picture of a cat I made:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=290052837678227&set=a.204355636247948.61287.100000205393208&type=1&theater

(Note - it's on Facebook, and I know various Slacktivites have Facebook pages, but in case anyone was going to offer to friend, I keep Facebook for people I know in real life only. Sorry and all that.)

[mercredigirl]

A friend of mine, Mia, is having some life circumstances where money would be helpful. She is also a remarkably talented artist and writer, and pre-ordering for her book Kandila is open through October 3rd. If anyone wishes to order it for themselves or as a gift to someone else, prices start from USD25.

[Lonespark]

Holy wow.
Everyone should go look at the Kandila order page right now. It is an amazing work of art and would make a wonderful holiday gift for folks who like poetry, calligraphy, Phillipine culture, etc., etc.

[Ruby]

I do some beading and make themed charm bracelets and pendants. I also knit a bit, but nowhere near fast enough that I could be useful, unless someone wants a bookmark or something. ;) I'll try to take some pics if anyone is interested.

[Nick Kiddle]

I make hardbound notebooks that everyone admires and no-one wants to buy. Anyone who wants one can have one for postage, because it's just so depressing having piles of them everywhere. I also do eclectic patchwork from scrap fabric if anyone's interested in that.

[storiteller]

In terms of Fair Trade, the Hunger Site carries a number of good Fair Trade companies: https://www.thehungersite.com/store/client-side.do?siteId=220&categoryId=284&adId=13297&placementId=214762&origin=&sort=Most%20Popular. I've gotten a couple things through Global Girlfriend that are very reasonably priced and good quality. Ten Thousand Villages is also all Fair Trade, and has a lot of housewear goods, with some jewelry tossed in: http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/ The nice thing about both of these is that they don't scream, "Look at me, aren't I so Ethical?" They're just plain nice.

As for small producers, I just attended the Crafty Bastards craft fair in DC today and scored some great stuff. The fair was only one day, but all of the artists are listed here: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/craftybastards/vendors/

[Lonespark]

Books you say? What kind of binding do they have? Do you have pictures up anywhere?

[chris the cynic]

I wish I could contribute something, but I make things that are outside the price range of any individual of sound mind. Out of my own price range as well, which is why I haven't made anything new since August.

-

@ Kit, the link to the picture doesn't work for me.

[Brin]

Kit, the link to the picture doesn't work for me.

Me neither, but in my case I know why: Dad blocked Facebook. The result is still the same.

[Mmy]

For those can't see Kit's Cat on Facebook -- here is an alternate link that should work for everyone

Kit's Cat

[MercuryBlue]

This content is currently unavailable
The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.

Kit: Photobucket?

[MercuryBlue]

That works too, thanks, mmy. Is cute, Kit.

[kisekileia]

Kit's cat is very cute!

I have two Christmas presents already in the knitting queue, plus a project for a Slacktivite, plus three other in-progress projects so I'm not comfortable committing to more projects until I have at least the Christmas presents and the Slacktivite's project done. Maybe later?

[chris the cynic]

It is a very nice looking cat.

Thank you for the link, Mmy.

[Mmy]

Okay -- I just found out something (which I am sure that lots of people in the US DID know) that stunned me.

In the US neither WIC (Women, Infants, Children) nor food stamps monies can go towards diapers.

How the hell are poor, struggling women to pay for diapers? You can't wash cloth diapers at a lot of laundromats and a lot of day-care centers won't allow them.

How the hell can the cost of diapers not be covered by government assistance programs?

Anyway, I suggest that anyone with a dollar or two to spare might donate to one of the organizations listed at Help a mother out.

This time of year (the giving season) and in the Northern Hemisphere, this weather, means that a lot of families need coats, hats, gloves, winter shoes and other things that many of us have extra of.

Organizations can also use sweat equity.

[Kit Whitfield]

That's horrendous. I hate using disposable nappies, but putting them beyond the reach of people who can't use washable ones is ghastly.

On a vaguely related note: for people in the UK who are trying to set up with an affordable nappy system, http://usednappies.co.uk/ is a kind of ebay for washable nappies. Getting them new saves you plenty of money long-term, but used ones are generally perfectly fine and a lot cheaper. Or, if you have to use terrycloth squares, thenappylady.co.uk has a lot of different folds you can use:

http://www.thenappylady.co.uk/articleGallery.asp?categoryID=6

[MercuryBlue]

My family used to be on WIC and I had no idea. And none of those organizations are in my state. Dammit. DC has one, though. *puts 'donations to DC Diaper Bank' on Christmas list*

I am not starting one. I refuse. I don't have the time and I don't know where I'd get the money. I am not emailing Huggies or Pampers to see if they'd be interested in the free publicity generated by donating enough diapers to get a diaper bank started, I am not emailing the DC Diaper Bank to find out what they needed and I would need in order to get a diaper bank in this state off the ground, I am not emailing the local food bank to see if they'd be interested in helping with storage and distribution, I am not emailing my supervisor to see if I'm remembering right that the state matches donations or to see if I can take advantage of the state email network to solicit donations.

I need to stop thinking about this because I am NOT DOING THIS.

Please list some more reasons why I should not do this.

Warning, language: How the ever-loving fuck can we expect women to not have 'I can't afford to take care of this baby' abortions when we don't even make sure every baby has diapers?

[Kit Whitfield]

Oh, and thanks for the kind words about the cat! That pattern tends to turn out slightly wobbly-legged creatures, but I have some more stable ones if anyone has a cat-lover on their list...

[MercuryBlue]

Emailed the DC Diaper Bank. I'm actually doing this crazy idea, aren't I.

[Mmy]

@Kit Whitfield: That's horrendous. I hate using disposable nappies, but putting them beyond the reach of people who can't use washable ones is ghastly

I suspect there is a "punish the poor" element in this whole thing. I can imagine the same people who say that the poor shouldn't have phones or tv sets would blither on about "well, they should wash them in their bathtubs like we did in the old day."

@MercuryBlue: I am not emailing Huggies or Pampers to see if they'd be interested in the free publicity generated by donating enough diapers to get a diaper bank started

Yup, it both a cheap way of buying good-will and good PR AND it is an income tax write off.

Also, I suspect many of these donations are made from stock that is substandard and would be a loss anyway.

[MercuryBlue]

Assuming for a moment that the poor deserve to be punished, isn't being poor punishment enough?

[Jenny Islander]

@MercuryBlue: Haven't you run into those discussions online where it's firmly established that you must be ragged (but not dirty or mussy-haired because that makes you a lazy bum), on foot, living in a house/apartment (not a trailer because that makes you trash, not a car because that makes you liable to have your family taken away, not a shelter because that makes you a loser unless you are a photogenic mother or child) that is almost completely empty because everything saleable was sold, twiddling your fingers for entertainment, and eating lentils and wild greens every day before you can be sufficiently poor to deserve aid?

[MercuryBlue]

People make me sick.

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: isn't being poor punishment enough

I suspect that some of those inordinately fond of the "just world" explanation economic disparities feel that the poor are poor because they are not willing to "work hard enough" to be not poor. That leads to the presumption that if the poor are poor because of their own fault then the way to get rid of poverty is to make it so miserably painful that no one would be willing to be poor.

Yes, I know that holding to that view of the world involves willful ignorance about reality (yes, of course the people in Horn of Africa are only starving to death by the thousands by their own choice....yeah) but it does give some psychological explanation other than simple cruelty.

[Jenny Islander]

Oh, and you can't be fat and God help you if your kids are fat because they may be put into foster care on that basis alone. And your clothes should not be brightly colored or of obviously good quality no matter how you got them. Also you can't have a nice car, but if your clunker breaks down so you can't do the mandated number of job interviews per week because the bus doesn't go where you need it to go, you don't get any help fixing it. And while your hair and beard can't be mussy, they should not be styled either...

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: People make me sick

I kid you not, when I was doing election/constituency work I had a woman come into my office at her wits end -- her welfare caseworker was accusing her of be a spendthrift because.....wait for it.....she bought toilet paper for herself and her children. I gather that the correct procedure for a poor person is to find old newspapers and use them.

I repeat - this is not an exaggeration. This happened. And yes, I was able to get something done. And this was in Canada. Case workers vary but it you get one who wants to make the life of hir clients a misery then they have all the power to do so.

[MercuryBlue]

...I'ma go back to writing my Supernatural fic. Compared to poverty and cruelty, having a hundred Cthulhus wanting to destroy the world is an easily solvable problem.

[cjmr]

In MD, some local food banks will accept donations of diapers. I've donated diapers several times, usually in response to a church announcement that "food pantry 'x' currently has a client in need of size 'y' diapers". It seems to be the same in the parishes I've attended here in MA, too.

I didn't realize you couldn't use TANF for buying diapers. That's just WRONG on so many levels! (I did know you couldn't use WIC, though, because our grocery store has stickers saying 'WIC approved' on the price labels for everything in the store that you can buy with WIC.)

[Ruby]

Mmy: I suspect that some of those inordinately fond of the "just world" explanation economic disparities feel that the poor are poor because they are not willing to "work hard enough" to be not poor. That leads to the presumption that if the poor are poor because of their own fault then the way to get rid of poverty is to make it so miserably painful that no one would be willing to be poor.

Possibly aided, oddly enough, by the idea that welfare is for fun and profit. In Soon, the futuristic dystopian atheist government has almost completely eradicated homelessness, which Jerry Jenkins attributes in part to "aid programs more profitable than panhandling." Because poor people remain poor because they're really looking to get rich off the gubmint. It pretty much squares with the interpretation of welfare that I have sometimes heard, in which people don't work or look for work, but just laze around all day, watching TV and eating bonbons and caviar and waiting for their next huge welfare check.

[Pthalo]

Speaking of diapers, one of my earliest memories is of toddling over to the gigantic orange bucket (read: almost as tall as I was, so about average size for a bucket) that my parents were soaking my diapers in, and imitating the motions my parents made while washing them as best I could: lifting a diaper partially out of the water and dropping it back in, rubbing it against itself, etc.

In my memory, I was doing a very good job and was thinking about how helpful I was and how grown up it was to be washing my own diapers, which is how I know it's a true memory. I don't think I was aware yet that my parents didn't wear diapers. I think I assumed they washed their own like they washed mine. If I was remembering being told about something I'd done as a baby, the focus would've been on the mess I was making. As an adult, I now doubt that I had the motor skills to do anything but make a mess.

[Kit Whitfield]

@MercuryBlue: I am not emailing Huggies or Pampers to see if they'd be interested in the free publicity generated by donating enough diapers to get a diaper bank started

Yup, it both a cheap way of buying good-will and good PR AND it is an income tax write off.

This may be lack of sleep, but are people saying this would be a good idea or a bad one?

[Nick Kiddle]

I read a comment once (by a random member of the public rather than an elected official, but still) saying that benefits should be paid in the form of "vouchers for food and clothes", which reduced me to spluttering incoherence from the sheer volume of wrongness. Apparently the idea is that if you give poor people money, they will spend it on things this person doesn't believe they need, and this is a bad thing because ... errr ... right-wing authoritarian need to control, at a guess. Being who I am, I devoted some time to figuring out ways to get round the system, just in case the government decide it's a good idea. All I could come up with was buying clothes and then reselling them on ebay, which would lose value but at least it would turn vouchers into spendable cash.

Notebooks: there are a couple of pictures here along with a description that should hopefully give you an idea of how they're made.

[Mmy]

@Kit Whitfield: This may be lack of sleep, but are people saying this would be a good idea or a bad one?

Oh, that was badly put by ME at least. Corporations don't give from the kindness of their hearts they get a massive return on their "charity" investment with both very cheap PR and often after the income tax write-off it costs them almost nothing.

[sarah]

I'd love to participate, but I'm not very artsy. In the past I've done posters and postcards with bits cut out from magazines. Or, I don't know, I could offer to edit some writing.

Ten Thousand Villages is awesome. I've gotten gifts there before--last Christmas, I got my mom a shawl from there and she loved it.

[Kit Whitfield]

Corporations don't give from the kindness of their hearts they get a massive return on their "charity" investment with both very cheap PR and often after the income tax write-off it costs them almost nothing.

If it would be workable, how about a Change.org petition?

[chris the cynic]

I read a comment once (by a random member of the public rather than an elected official, but still) saying that benefits should be paid in the form of "vouchers for food and clothes"

To a certain extent I think that some* benefits should be paid in the form of food. It's not because I sit up late at night worrying that poor people will use their benefits for things they don't deserve, it's because there's a problem with cheap food. I don't really see the same problem with things like clothing because as near as I can tell cheap clothing is still adequate clothing insofar as it goes, but cheap food can be actively bad for you.

Give people money and they're going to try to stretch it as far as they can for obvious reasons. It's natural and it's smart to try to get as much as you can with the amount that you have. But if the goal is to eliminate the nutritional problems that come with poverty, that also represents a problem because when you're trying to stretch your resources as far as they can go you're going to end up with crap food.

It seems to me that the solution would be to give people food. Good food. I don't know if it is at all workable in the real world, there are all sorts of health concerns, allergies, specific dietary needs, and so forth. There's also taste, giving people food that is healthy while repugnant to them isn't a good solution. Still, if someone too poor to provide for themselves wants apples, for example, I'd rather that we give them government apples than give them government money and pretend it's their fault that they use it to buy the less expensive less healthy things.

-

*I originally left out the "some" which completely changed what I was saying. Giving people access to good food isn't enough. As demonstrated by the example of diapers in this thread. It just seems to me like the problem with food isn't just that people don't have money to buy it, it is also that the pricing makes it so when people do have money, or are given money, they have a strong incentive not to buy good food because good food makes the money go away faster.

[sarah]

@chris: Plus, it's a problem if your only options for grocery shopping are corner stores, which don't usually carry fresh food. When I lived in Camden, there was one grocery store in the whole city (a Pathmark). I'm not even sure that the buses ran that way, so if you didn't have a car, it was hard to get to.

[Lonespark]

yeah, the healthy food thing is a problem, but the solutions aren't simple. We have a program where you can use food stamps cards at farmer's markets, which is good, but that only works if there's a market convenient to you, and that means the time it's open as well as the location. Plus then you still have to cook the food... I feel like there should be more "soup kitchen" type places that might not be charities, per se, but kind of subsized cafeteria places in neighborhoods that need that?

When people lament the lack of cooking skills or time spent cookingamongst many folks in my generation or my kids' I feel like they are complaining about the wrong problem. People need healthy food and family dinner time is important. But who cares if you cook the food yourself? If there were decent affordable places to pick up prepared meals and/or eat on your way home from school/work/etc., then wouldn't that be just as good? And it would give jobs to people who do like to cook.

[Mmy]

@chris the cynic: To a certain extent I think that some* benefits should be paid in the form of food. It's not because I sit up late at night worrying that poor people will use their benefits for things they don't deserve, it's because there's a problem with cheap food. I don't really see the same problem with things like clothing because as near as I can tell cheap clothing is still adequate clothing insofar as it goes, but cheap food can be actively bad for you.

Oh, wow, if you want to introduce a system that allows for lots of "kyriarchical bullying" you couldn't do much better than telling people what food they are allowed to buy/eat.

Just wait till you give someone the power to tell you that "you must have meat once a day" or "you must ingest your protein in the form of dairy" -- just wait till some person tells you that that you "shouldn't be buying milk you should still be breastfeeding" wait till someone tells you that it is "silly" to keep kosher or that you are troublesome because you won't take your protein ration in the form of pork.

They have already had cases in the US of people purposely mislabeling food because they "didn't believe" in gluten intolerance or thought that people were exaggerating the problem they have with peanuts.

Wait till a mother on welfare has to get a doctor's certificate in order to NOT give their child eggs or peanut butter.

[Kit Whitfield]

They have already had cases in the US of people purposely mislabeling food because they "didn't believe" in gluten intolerance or thought that people were exaggerating the problem they have with peanuts.

Seriously? Who?

[hapax]

But who cares if you cook the food yourself? If there were decent affordable places to pick up prepared meals and/or eat on your way home from school/work/etc., then wouldn't that be just as good?

Well, there is a problem. Either the food will have to be prepared at the site, which involves a great deal more licensing (kitchen and food serving areas have to meet code, licensing and regular health inspections of site and staff, all of which can be quite expensive) or it will have to be prepared elsewhere, which seriously limits the possibilities.

This is why most food banks won't accept things like home cooked casseroles or soups, and I couldn't send in home made cookies or cupcakes for my kid's school. If my kitchen hadn't been officially inspected, the food kitchen or school would be liable for any food-borne illnesses.

It's an infuriating restriction, but a moment's thought will reveal why eliminating these regulations would be much much worse.

[sarah]

[[hapax: Well, there is a problem. Either the food will have to be prepared at the site, which involves a great deal more licensing (kitchen and food serving areas have to meet code, licensing and regular health inspections of site and staff, all of which can be quite expensive) or it will have to be prepared elsewhere, which seriously limits the possibilities.]]

There are places that do that, but it's usually very specialized. The best place I know in Philly is MANNA (http://www.mannapa.org/about/) -- Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance. They're kind of amazing. They were founded by a church back in the '90s to serve meals to people with HIV/AIDS when they were at the acute stages of illness. They've expanded, I think, to people with cancer and other illnesses who can't cook for themselves. I volunteered for them a while ago. They're really, *really* careful about things like allergies and other food-related problems. And most of their clients are low-income. MANNA's really well-funded and supported by a lot of groups, so they're able to operate on a large scale.