About

The 24^th Exchange Market for Children and Youngsters is A Casa da Esquina project with the support of the Economic Solidarity Studies Group of CES (ECOSOL/CES) and researchers of the Centre for Social Studies.

The Exchange Market for Children and Youngsters has a political-pedagogical foundation, which is to unleash ourselves from a capitalist model of exchange through an assignment of value, valuing the emergence of other ways of thinking about the organisation of economic life, within the family.

This experience seeks to encourage children and youth’s detachment from various toys and goods consumed (clothing, accessories, technological devices etc.), restraining the sense of fun from accumulating ever new objects.

The exchange market also develops the solidarity sense of sharing, questioning the accumulation and concentration of assets, beheld in an alarming rate in children's and youth consumption habits. Thus, the exchange market for Children and Youth rebate the dominant idea that only new things have value and serve to fun, and stimulated a broader life cycle for toys, games, books and other goods, into circulation by children and young people participating in the initiative.

The exchanges market uses a social currency, called garden (just because it happened for the first time in the Botanical Garden). The social currency is not anchored in the euro and reinforces the playful and supportive nature of the experience: it not only extends the trading conditions between participants with very different products but also reconstructs the value of things in a sense particularly attributed by children and young people, contrary to the exchange value determined by the market.

The Exchange Market for Children and Youngsters intends to carry out a tour through the city's heritage. This time, in its 24^th edition, the market will be at Mercado do Calhabé. To participate in the Exchange Market just bring from home toys, educational games, computer, books, school supplies, and a small blanket to display them.

Participation is limited to children and youngsters and admission is free.