MORE THAN 'JUST BUY LOCAL' RESTORING A SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY BASED ECONOMY

Everyone knows about BUY LOCAL campaigns.

Every local chamber of commerce supports the concept and municipal governments encourage their citizens to keep their shopping within their boundaries and that is about as far as it goes. Most of these efforts do not distinguish between locally owned and operated firms and the local outlets of national chain stores. As long as they fall within a municipalities boundaries, the chamber, the city council and the other business boosters, encourage people to patronize them.

But, a different approach is taking shape!

A new movement has emerged with a focus on the creation of organic, local, economic communities rooted in authentically independent and locally owned enterprises. The goal is to create self-sustaining local economies made up of autonomous, locally based, businesses.

One expression of this trend is BUSINESS ALLIANCE FOR LOCAL LIVING ECONOMIES (BALLE.) BALLE is a network of co-ops throughout the U.S. and Canada that are designed to address the particular strengths and challenges for their respective regions and communities. It provides a framework for mutual support and information sharing among these co-ops...each of which may have a somewhat different approach and strategy.

Here in Sonoma county, the associating co-op is golocal.coop  or livingeconomies.org

Kathleen Bonham

Vintage and Country Specialist

Sebastopol, Healdsburg, Santa Rosa