Holiday Sale Offers Locally Made Gifts While Supporting Nonprofits

The Peace Education Center will host its annual Alternative Holiday Sale on Friday and Saturday at Edgewood United Church of Christ in East Lansing.

Peace Education Center board member Tom Oswald told East Lansing Info that the sale has been held for more than 50 years.

Fair trade organizations and local vendors will offer practical household goods, beauty products and art, he said. Area nonprofit organizations will also be on hand to speak about their work and encourage collaboration.

Judy Martin represents one of those nonprofits, Solar Circle, which distributes solar lamps in the Masati district of southern Tanzania. She explained that the area has limited access to electricity, so her organization provides lamps to individuals who volunteer in their communities.

Martin said the organization also builds homes for those in need.

“Mainly they’re elderly or infirm,” she said of the recipients. “Some of them have lost a leg to a snake bite, or there are several families where a woman is widowed, or her husband has left, and there she is. The houses are the same everybody else has in the village; they’re made with mud brick and grass roofs. The only rule that they have for the building program is the houses have to look like everybody else’s. You can’t pick them out as, ‘that’s a poor person’s house.’

“Last year we distributed, I think, 15,600 solar lanterns and built about 120 houses.”

Martin said visitors to the sale can purchase quilts and table napkins made by volunteers with fabrics brought back from East Africa.

“All the stuff is homemade [and] you’re doing a good thing for people in the community,” she said. “And at the same time, you’re getting these beautiful gifts for people. It’s a win-win.”

The sale runs from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.