The holiday season is here and our team at The Potentiality is thrilled to share a couple of gift ideas, which is something that we do at this time of year, that inform and inspire your community building choices. Here are some sustainable holiday gift ideas from The Potentiality team that highlight how experiences and locality can drive positive impact in your community.
Give the gift of experience
It’s hard to ignore how much consumerism the holiday season unleashes on us. This year Kurt giving the gift of time wherever possible. Research shows that, once we achieve a certain baseline of income, happiness only marginally improves as we acquire more money and things. New experiences foster learning and connection. Freeing up time for novel experiences – or even for chores, life maintenance and other kinds of adulting – is its own currency. We all struggle to find enough time, especially during the busy holiday season.
For people with small children this might mean giving them some free babysitting so they can have a date night or home-cooked meal. Whatever it is, considering how to give an experience as opposed to a thing is a good thing to consider this holiday season.
Give the gift of locality
Independent businesses recirculate nearly five times more revenue in the local economy than multinationals. They do this while creating more jobs, donating 24 times more per dollar to local charities, and spending more revenue on local products and services. According to LOCO BC, independent businesses play a critical role in the real economy, which is defined by economic activities that generate goods and services as opposed to a financial economy that is concerned exclusively with activities in the financial markets.
Whether it’s an experience at a local restaurant, an awesome piece of art or a book from an independent bookstore, we can make a positive impact in our communities by supporting local businesses. At times, but not always, things from independent businesses cost a bit more – my best advice here is to buy less; the world has too much stuff, so spending a bit less on quality items that will have a real affect on where you live and work is a great way to share the wealth during the holiday season.
Give the gift of sustainable giving
This holiday, if you’re gifting things, consider doubling down and helping someone you care about and someone you likely don’t even know. We realize the signal-to-noise ratio makes it hard to find the really great stuff, so here are a few solid bets to get you started.
- A Canadaland subscription for Canadians interested in news, politics, and the media; this crew is producing some of the straight-up best podcasts and mini-series coming out of Canada right now.
- Delayed Gratification is a great quarterly that revisits the news with well produced independent journalism – it is a fantastic inoculation against the anxiety-producing 24-hr news cycle.
- For a true classic for anyone and everyone I recommend National Geographic. When haven’t you picked up a National Geographic and found something interesting that reconnects you your sense of awe at the wonders of our planet?!
Local or not, a lot of us have acquired (and will acquire over the holidays) stuff we don’t need. Escape the trap of stuff and look instead to a charity like Canadian Feed the Children. It’s very well-regarded international charity (Not related to the US charity with poor ratings) that does a lot of good.
Happy holidays!