Back on track and going strong

March 2, 2019 by Daniela Leave a comment

The 2020 elections have already started. In their bid for office, candidates and their surrogates have spent hours of air time and columns of print on income inequality, climate change and social division. These issues are not new to the readers of The Noah Project. We’ve been talking about them, among ourselves, for years.

In fact, The Noah Project was established over five years ago as a counterbalance to the seemingly endless stream of negative articles about rampant consumerism, corporate predation, crony capitalism and social breakdown. We wanted to present our readers with positive ideas they might find intriguing, initiatives they might not have been aware of and organizations they could work with to effect change.

Below the surface of all that bad news, movements were being born and nurtured; La Via Campesina, an international peasants movement working to improve the lives of millions of peasants, small and medium size farmers, landless people, rural women and youth, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. The Democracy Collaborative founded in 2000 at the University of Maryland as a research center dedicated to the pursuit of democratic renewal, increased civic participation, and community revitalization. The Fair Trade Federation, tracing its roots to the late 1970’s when individual alternative trade organizations began holding yearly conferences. Incorporated formally as the North American Alternative Trade Organization in 1994, it changed its name to The Fair Trade Federation the following year and has been dedicated to expanding markets for artisans and farmers around the world.

We are thrilled about resuming The Noah Project and look forward to bringing you a more focused site, with more targeted content in the months and years to come. Keeping a site like this running is challenging and time consuming. If you are interested in contributing in any way, please contact me at daniela@noahsgiftsandgallery.com

Author: Daniela

I will forever be grateful that I was introduced to the utility and beauty of hand crafted products early in life - from the symbolic motifs sewn into the coarse linen fabric of Croatian traditional wear to the colorful Kilim carpets that decorated the parquet floors in my grandmother's living room. I treasure the memories of my grandfather teaching me how to protect myself against the "evil eye," the smell of the flower stalls in the open air market where my grandmother bought produce early every morning for the day’s meals and the summers spent at my great grandmother's where the village wags would come to gossip over thick, black Turkish coffee in her cool stone kitchen. Someone noted that "For all of us that want to move forward, there are a very few that want to keep the old methods of production, traditions and crafts alive." I am a fellow traveler with those who value the old traditions and folk wisdom. I believe the knowledge they possess can contribute significantly to our efforts to build a more sustainable world - one that values the individual over the corporation, conservation over growth and happiness over wealth.