Abstract

The 8th Trade Market for Children and Young People is a project of Casa da Esquina, in collaboration with the CES Study Group on Solidarity Economy (ECOSOL/CES) and with the support of researchers from the Centre for Social Studies.

The trade market for children and ypung peolple has a political-pedagogical base, which is to loosen the exchanges of a capitalist model of assigning value, emphasizing the emergence of other ways of thinking the organization of economic life, in the family.

This experiment seeks to stimulate the detachment of children and young people concerning  toys and miscellaneous consumer goods (clothing, accessories, technological devices etc.), disfranchising  the sense of fun pertaining to the purchase new objects constantly,

The trade market also develops the sense of shared solidarity, questioning the accumulation and concentration of assets, as witnessed ominously in infant and juvenile consumer habits.thus rebating the dominant idea that only new things have value and can  entertain, motivating  a broader life cycle for toys, games, books and other goods put into circulation by children and young people participating in the initiative.

Adopting a social currency called garden, not anchored in the euro, reinforces the playful and solidary nature of the  experience: not only extendting the  conditions of exchange between participants with very different products, but also reconstructing the value of things as a sense particularly attributed by children and young people, against the exchange value established by the market.