The last world economic crisis has shown up that the world is inter related and therefore, any local action either on the South and North can have also its effects to other latitudes of the planet. This globalization, of which we are every day more conscious, has to make us more conscious about the importance of promoting the just commerce, a responsible consumption and the need to act in the local ambience if we want to transform the unjust global economic system.

From this point of view, the initiative that we present in this book as a good practice is every day more suitable, as with an assumed proposal at a local level, the commercialization of the coffee of just commerce as CAFÉ CIUTAT (city coffee), with the name of the municipality, one can make real the distribution of the coffee of a population’s cooperative also concrete of the South that allows local producers to be able to produce a quality product, agroecological, without having to pay an excessive price and neither having an unjustly treat from the intermediaries.

This pioneering proposal of local joint in our country, allows to create alliances in the municipal ambience of how it is possible to promote the management of concrete alternatives that materialize in changes of behaviours, both of the public institutions, and of the civic entities, the local associations of merchants, civic spaces, which encourage an educational process, a more responsible consumption. The initiative of the CAFÉ CIUTAT (city coffee) is a decentralised proposal that has an own identity in every municipality, but coordinated also in network, so that the experiences exchange is carried out among every locality and that contributes to enrich and to improve the local proposals so that the process is pedagogic and in turn sustainable.

In this sense we can say that the proposal of just commerce that we present to you is a good practice that is already functioning in 9 cities of Catalunya (Terrassa, Manresa, Mataró, Molins de Rei, Sant Quirze del Vallés, Prat de Llobregat, Calella and Sant Adrià del Besòs) and it is the result of the collective effort of all the actors at all levels: the producers' cooperatives of the South, the solidarity importer organization, the Catalan town halls, the local authorities and the Delegation of Barcelona, which gives support, and above all the citizenship. The purchase of the CAFÉ CIUTAT (city coffee) is a gesture in which every day more, consumers make its engagement attitude real with the just commerce and, with this decision, they help to make real a world that we would like to be more just and united.

We invite you to read this book 11 where we present this good practice of Catalan cooperation, to announce it and, if it is possible you to take part in, or to analyse how to make it real in your municipality.

Núria Camps i Vidal
Director of AVALUEM

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