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Sustainable Practices
Fair Trade
The work of Jubilee Economics Ministries includes educating individuals and groups about the importance of buying fairly-traded products.
- We believe that fair trade expresses sabbath-jubilee values, which ensure that workers and the land will be treated justly and kindly.
- Our congregations, households, schools, and workplaces are all venues in which to make the shift to fair trade.
- Purchasing fair trade products is an amazing way to make decisions that counter the destructive international free trade agreements negotiated by countries and the World Trade Organization.
What is Fair Trade?
Fair trade is a market-based approach to sustainable development that links consumers directly with producers, thereby reducing the number of levels in the distribution chain. As a result, a greater share of revenue gets in the hands of small-scale farmers. The purchase of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate bars, bananas and other fruits benefits producers and consumers by promoting:
- fair prices
- cooperative workplaces
- environmental sustainability
- access to financial and technical support
- quality products
Learn More
As advocates of justice for both indigenous workers and God's creation, we offer educational workshops that focus on fair trade for organizations, businesses, churches, schools and college campuses. If you would like to arrange a fair trade presentation in the San Diego or Chicago areas, please contact us.
For a more comprehensive understanding of Fair Trade concept, please visit TransFair USA. Also, additional information can be found on the following web sites
Las Casas de Jubileo
Living sustainably, not just profitably.
Saying "enough!" in a world shouting "more!"
Connecting the dots that practice a true alternative!
All of these are goals of Las Casas de Jubileo (houses of jubilee), a JEM initiative that believes our households are a prime location to live sabbath-jubilee practices.
How do we make our day-to-day household decisions?
- Do they reflect the prevailing economics of domination by the few over the many and over creation?
- Or we choose to distance ourselves from an economics that not only breeds unsustainable patterns of materialism and consumerism, but that also stresses us out?
Las Casas de Jubileo participants are attracted to imagining and creating new-old patterns for living sustainably - an alternative to corporate-led, top-down model of globalization.
A Network of Households
We want to connect the dots in a way that helps us see how our own households can live with greater integrity within the web of creation, and at the same time contribute to changing the direction in which our world is going. Our desire to live sustainably invariably means we resist much of what is in vogue. Recognizing that swimming upstream to the cultural flow can be both freeing and demanding, Las Casas de Jubileo provides community with others who also want to pursue this other way.
This household network empowers us to address the challenge more effectively and multiplies our impact into a movement. As our households help one another live more attuned to the economics of enough, we energize and inspire one another - a contrast to the despair that comes when we feel that to participate in the culture and systems of domination are our only choice.
So, networking our households and forming intentional communities are key strategies in practicing the deep economics of gift and abundance. We want to encourage one another in lifestyles that express more of the Spirit's movement, less of the spirit of the times.
For more information see Las Casas de Jubileo: Networking Households to Energize Jubilee Practices.
Recommended resource on intentional communities: Diana Leafe Christian, Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, New Society Publishers, 2003, foreword by Patch Adams. Used copies available at www.abebooks.com.
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