Solidarity Exchange fair for children and youngsters

The Exchange Fair for Children and Youngsters is an initiative of Casa da Esquina (http://nacasadaesquina.blogspot.com) and has the support of the CES Solidarity Economy Studies Group of (Ecosol-CES) and researchers from the Centre for Social Studies.

The exchange fair for children and youngsters has a political-pedagogical basis, which is to disaffiliate exchange from a capitalist model of value attribution, valuing the emergence of other ways of thinking the organization of economic life in the family. This experience seeks to stimulate the detachment of children and youngsters from toys and various consumables (clothing, accessories, technological devices etc.), eliminating the fun from accumulating of ever new objects.

The initiative also develops the shared sense of sharing, questioning the accumulation and concentration of goods, already seen in a worrying way in the consumption habits of children and young people. In this sense, the market for children and youngsters rebuffs the dominant idea that only new things have value and amuse, stimulating a wider life cycle for toys, games, books and other goods put into circulation by children and young people participating in the initiative.

The exchange fair works with a social currency called garden (since its first edition was held in the Botanical Garden). The social currency is not anchored in the euro and reinforces the playful and supportive character of experience: it not only widens the conditions of exchange between participants with very different products but also rebuilds the value of things in children’s perspective and contrary to the exchange value established by the market.