Shift Your Shopping NOW!

Shift Your Shopping encourages residents and businesses to make a “Shift” by buying from local independent businesses for the holiday season. Shift Your Shopping offers a simple, powerful way to boost our economy and preserve and create jobs in our local communities.

The campaign encourages residents to take job creation and economic concerns into their own hands by exercising their power to strengthen their own local economies. Numerous studies on the impact of buying from local independent business have found impressive benefits. For example, a 2008 study of Kent County Michigan by Civic Economics projected shifting 10% of the county’s per capita spending from chains to locally-owned independent businesses would create “almost $140 million in new economic activity and 1,600 new jobs for the region.”

To exemplify how a shift in shopping is a gift to our community, PVLF and its members have partnered with Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) in a Think Local Thank Local effort to donate a portion of their sales during National Buy Local Week, November 25th through December 4th, to CISA’s Emergency Farm Fund to assist those farmers who were affected by Tropical Storm Irene.

There is a growing list of members who are participating in the Pioneer Valley Local First Think Local, Thank Local campaign to help fund local farmers.  Check out the full list here.