Sample Description of an Alternative Gift Fair
Alternative Gift Fairs can come in many shapes and sizes, from a larger fair that fills an entire hall and involves dozens of volunteers to a single table staffed by a single volunteer. Any size fair can do a wonderful job of drawing community together around common values and alternatives to a commercial culture. But for the purpose of giving a coherent description, we will try to help you visualize a gift fair as it has been held in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Picture yourself walking down the outside steps leading to a church hall. Your eyes scan from a large group of children playing in an adjacent playground to a woman in front of you. It's a blustery day but the woman greets you with a warm smile, welcomes you to the Second Annual Alternative Gift Fair, and hands you a "shopping list." You scan the list, seeing gifts of garden plots for urban families in the United States, microenterprise loans to Haitian families, solar cookers for refugees in Kenya, solar water systems for hurricane victims in Honduras, and cargo bicycles for South Africans. The alternative gifts range from $5 to $100 and all are tax deductible.
You thank the woman and walk through the door. Inside, the hall is bustling with activity and aglow with holiday spirit. Volunteers have decked the place out in holiday decorations and two musicians are playing a guitar and banjo on the other side of the room. The room is ringed with tables, one for each group on your shopping list. Each table contains information on the charity, its mission and its projects. Local charities have sent representatives to staff their tables, while tables for the international charities are staffed by a volunteer who has read up on the organization and can describe their work to the several dozen 'shoppers' milling about the room and roaming from table to table. In the center of the room are several shoppers sipping hot apple cider and eating baked goods. Upon closer look, you see a table in the behind them where a man is selling hot drinks and baked goods to help the group cover the cost of putting on the fair. There are three other tables at the front of the room. At the first, three cashiers are collecting shopping lists and money from the shoppers and giving them receipts and attractive gift cards. Many of these shoppers are then making their way over to a second table, staffed by calligraphers. You lean over one shopper's shoulder and see that the inside of her card now says "Dear Mom, A bike helmet has been given to an at-risk youth in Montgomery County. Love, Stephanie." The final table contains a wealth of information on other ways to celebrate meaningful holidays - a "top ten list" of homemade gift ideas, a "gift of time" certificate and sample copies of Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday and the Center for a New American Dream's "Simplify the Holidays" brochure.
Shoppers come and go, but you stay to mingle and watch. At the end of the afternoon, the crowd thins and the cashier table closes. One by one, the volunteers collapse into chairs, but each is sporting a big satisfied smile. They're exhausted, but they're psyched. They've brought holiday cheer to a couple hundred members of their community. They've raised a ton of money for causes dear to their hearts. They're on target for a record early finish to their holiday shopping. And their signup sheet for volunteers for the 2002 fair is completely full!
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Get a free e-copy of our guide to organizing alternative gift fairs - this guide is based on lessons learned in putting on [[new text:]] Alternative Gift Fairs in Takoma Park, Maryland and D.C. and supporting Gift Fairs across the country.