ABOUT US
"Strengthening our committment to the earth and her indigenous people"
We serve as a platform for indigenous artisans – to help preserve, exhibit, and market their traditional and innovative folk art, with interest in the sustainability of the natural fibers used to create these objects. We do this through community-based workshops, shared resource management activities, and our market linkages.
Earth Bound, Inc. is a volunteer-run not-for-profit 501(c)3 social enterprise and adheres to Fair Trade Principals. It is funded primarily through donations and the sale of Fairly Traded products.
OUR STORY
Earth Bound was conceived nearly 30 years ago by Laurie Wilkins, a biologist working at the Florida Museum of Natural History, while studying Conservation Biology and Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. She was inspired by new ideas (at the time) such as adding value locally to the extraction of non-timber forest products, thereby empowering and benefitting local inhabitants. She opened Alternatives fair trade store in Gainesville in 1991, hoping to find a means of financial support for Earth Bound.
The Earth Bound concept was fueled by the beauty, ingenuity, and cosmology expressed by cultural items made by indigenous people she met while traveling around the world. Earth Bound could not have existed over these years of dramatic change without the help and dedication of board members, students, and volunteers who have worked with Earth Bound. Alternatives Global Marketplace continues today online in the capable hands of the new owner Alisa Woofter,
who purchased the store in 2012.
WE ARE EARTH BOUND