It’s easy to look around and feel that there is little you can do to make a difference, and affect real change. There are so many BIG issues I am passionate about; but it’s easy to wonder what I can possibly do to make a difference. Do you feel that way too?

Yet, every day in small, unobservable ways we are making a difference — either in support of our beliefs or often in direct opposition to the things we care about.

How we spend money, where we spend money, and what we invest in are all ways of voting for the causes we hold dear. Sometimes they actually are even more powerful than our votes during election time.

Here are just a few ways you could make a difference in your daily choices:

1. Buy local food where possible from farmer’s markets and CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture). It will improve the lives of real people growing our food rather than factory farms that not only have poor practices that may be hurting your health but also often unfair treatment of the people doing the work at these farms and factories.
2. Buy clothing and accessories from companies that ethically source their products and commit to not using abusive practices or child labor to create your fashion. More and more options abound for these choices through companies like Etsy who creates a market for independent artisans and Raven & Lily who create stellar designs for women in 3rd world countries to produce and then bring these women’s efforts to our market for us to buy.
3. Look for and support emerging entrepreneurial companies in your community or online at places like The Grommet where new consumer ideas have a chance to be seen and supported by average people, rather than letting large retailers decide what you have to choose from.
4. Move your investments from companies and funds that have money in things you do not approve of to things you are passionate about — healthy food supply, energy resources, child labor, environmental issues, education, or anything you deem critical to future generations.
5. Ask about and investigate the companies that you do the most business with, rather than assume they value the same things you do.
6. Look for ways to find solutions that improve your contribution to the world that do not break your bank or your back by thinking outside the box. When my first child was born, I was appalled by the amount of diapers going into our landfills. But I was a corporate executive with no time and no inclination to wash cloth diapers. Then, a friend gave me a present of one month of diaper service. I did not even know something like that existed. But once I started using them, I was hooked. It was clean, easy and no more expensive than the mountains of paper diapers I might have thrown in my trash over his baby years. When my third child was a baby we lived in the Dominican Republic. A box of 5 paper diapers cost about the same as a box of 100 stateside and the local women actually showed me that cleaning diapers was really not as hard as I had come to believe in my modern western civilized life. When I returned home, I returned to my diaper service – -but no longer out of fear that cleaning diapers was as bad as I imagined. It was a choice, and it was available.

What things might you be unaware of that could change your actions to be more aligned with your beliefs? Western women spend 85% of the purchasing dollars. What message are you sending with the dollars you spend?