Inspired By African Culture and Heritage

These unique and individually hand-painted candles from Africa are hand painted in colours that reflect the warmth and diversity of the unique South African landscape. Many of the designs incorporate animal prints and geometric shapes that are frequently used in tribal patterns. These candles will add an exotic touch to any room

Old oil cans have been cut and carefully made into these life sized tiny praying mantis. In many poor countries around the world selling crafts is the only income that some can generate. As new materials are too expensive some of the most ingenious uses of recycled materials come from these resourceful craftspeople.
These brilliant little recycled insects are made in Sth Africa from tin.

 Trade Winds Teas are grown processed, blended and packaged in Sri Lanka. They are high quality pure Ceylon Fair-Trade Teas. When you buy Trade Winds you

* help strengthen the economy of a developing country
* provide employment for Sri Lankans
* bypass the transnational tea companies

Trade Winds creates markets for small scale producers of basic commodities. It promoted sustainable low impact agriculture and specialises in sourcing and supplying Australian consumers with first quality organically grown tea and coffee.

Eco-chic African paper bead jewellery is handmade from recycled paper. Each bead is cut from strips of calendar and magazine paper carefully rolled by hand and secured with glue, varnished and assembled into necklaces and earrings . Dextrous  workmanship is transformed into bold colours that can be worn singly or layered . The colourful beads are not only beautiful, but also provide a source of independence and opportunity.

Author: Saffronwinds

It seems like hardly a week goes by without that we hear something, on radio, television, or in the papers, about how this could change the world; or how that should change the world; or about why the thing that was supposed to change the world last week is actually evil and should be banned. Well, there's a kind of counterculture movement occurring in, of all things, the gift trade, which might actually make the grade for real. Ethical gifts, it's called – and it could just make a difference. A real one.

How? Ethical trade has previously been the province of a very small market, a kind of alternative pound. It's made the mainstream, though, in the last year or so – a time frame that coincides it quite nicely with a general realisation that corporations are not very nice and that all that money, so often flippantly vilified by consumers all over the country as lining the pockets of fat cat merchants, really is damaging the lives of millions. Consumers have started to translate the ease and availability of corporate products into the financial misery they're seeing daily, as people who can't afford to keep up their business fight in a crippled economy go belly up. Ethical gifts, which are really the first mainstream evidence of an anti corporate trend that has long been running through the more affluent portion of the British consumer market, are starting to make themselves known across the scale as people turn their backs on the kinds of companies that they feel have put farmers out of business, or destroyed the local character of an area by replacing all the little shops with a big, white, fluorescently lit food hall.

Are gifts really able to change all that? Not as such – but they can surely make a dent. Ethical gifts are broadly defined as any product the money from which is parcelled out fairly to the people involved in its making. That means the women who weave the silk in beautiful ethnic scarves being given decent working conditions and a proper salary. That means that the ethical presents market, which has become hugely fashionable because it won't act like the big companies we're all so fed up with, is forcing those same big companies to change the way they act, too.

It's all very well for a hyper global corporation to produce good handbags, for example – but, now that the popularity of ethical gifts has outlined the less than moral conditions in which those handbags are generated, one is finding that other companies are popping up who manage to make the same quality handbags without stealing someone's livelihood. Result – any consumer with a conscience (and ethical trade has made having a conscience superbly fashionable) starts buying from the morally comfortable supplier of handbags instead.

It's not a dramatic change, but it is a dent. And it's a dent that would never have been made unless the ethical gifts market had become as popular as it is. Next time a person buys a present for someone, they'd do well to think about where it came from. If we all did that, we wouldn't be in the mess we are.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/gifts-articles/how-ethical-gifts-can-change-the-world-3075867.html

About the Author

Saffron Winds provides recycled fashion accessories and ethical gifts at reasonable rates. Made from recycled items, the gifts and fashion accessories like handbags, jewellery are handmade and makes for nice presents. For more information please visit http://www.saffronwinds.com