The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is a growing North American alliance of nearly 60 fully autonomous local business networks with their own names, missions, and initiatives, representing about 20,000 US and Canadian entrepreneurs. All networks share a commitment to Living Economy principles. BALLE works to catalyze, strengthen and connect these local business networks dedicated to building Local Living Economies. A Local Living Economy ensures that economic power resides locally, sustaining healthy community life and natural life, as well as long-term economic viability.
BALLE envisions a sustainable world economy made up of local living economies that build long-term economic empowerment and prosperity through local business ownership, economic justice, cultural diversity, and environmental stewardship.
BALLE's building blocks include:
- Sustainable agriculture
- Renewable energy
- Zero waste manufacturing
- Independent retail
- Green building
- Community capital
The BALLE networks has 20,000 members. As of September 2009, it will be headquartered in Bellingham, Washington.
Read more about Business Alliance For Local Living Economies: Principles, Practices
Famous quotes containing the words business, alliance, local and/or living:
“It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“It is a power stronger than will.... Could a stone escape from the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible, for evil to form an alliance with good.”
—Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870)
“Surely there must be some way to find a husband or, for that matter, merely an escort, without sacrificing one’s privacy, self-respect, and interior decorating scheme. For example, men could be imported from the developing countries, many parts of which are suffering from a man excess, at least in relation to local food supply.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other “isms,” it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)