Center for Fair & Alternative Trade
CFAT Collaborates with Downtown Development Authority
Posted: Fall 2009.
For the past year, CFAT has been working closely with organizations and activists in the local community to create a Community Marketplace for Fort Collins, Colorado – our hometown. Our goal is to make the Community Marketplace about more than just Fort Collins and local food. We aim to make it a place where the needs of communities from all over the world are valued by helping local businesses and shoppers find products made under environmentally sustainable and socially fair conditions.
Working with the Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority, CFAT prepared a feasibility study for the design of the marketplace and an inventory and analysis of private certification systems most applicable to the Northern Colorado region. These plans demonstrate how CFAT is strengthening the linkages between the Local Sustainability movement and the Globally Fair movement by providing state-of-the-art research, technical assistance and educational outreach to businesses, producer and community groups, government agencies, the media and others at both the local and international levels.
CFAT will build upon our participation in the Fort Collins Marketplace project as a pilot and demonstration initiative, from which we will support initiatives for other communities in Colorado, the U.S. and beyond as they seek to more effectively engage the emerging global Conscious Consumer Economy.