Have you ever sworn – usually after spending too much on holiday gifts – that you’d never do it again? That next year would be different. In fact, next year we’re going to buy “gifts” for each other that benefit others. Furthermore, we don’t need anything, doggonit, and we’re getting off the holiday gift-buying madness train.
If you remember ever feeling that way, there are at least two organizations with great catalogs that would like to help you out. You can visit them online, and if you’d like, they will even send you a print catalog: World Vision and Heifer International.
Here’s how Heifer International works: for as little as $20, you can send a flock of chicks to a desperately poor family somewhere out there, in the name of one of your loved ones. Let’s say it’s your father. He will receive a gift card telling him about the gift made in his honor. But it doesn’t stop there…
The family will receive complete training in raising their new chicks. When they have grown and have chicks of their own, the family will pass some of the offspring forward to another family, who will repeat the cycle. Over and over again. Heifer International calls it Passing on the Gift. For even less, you can buy a “share” in a larger animal, say, a heifer. Or you can send one for $500. How cool is that?
World Vision works on a similar principle. In addition to animals, you can help finance a business through a microloan, send a sewing machine that will lift a woman out of poverty, build a well for safe water, save a sexually exploited child, or even finance or build a school for an orphaned child.
My word, the work these two organizations are doing makes me cry just to think about it. Just so you know, my DH and I are strong believers in organizations like these. We’ve had over 20 sponsored children over the years that we’ve been together. I can’t tell you how incredible it feels to make sure that someone else has the cooking gadgets and food (and education, health, safety, etc) that they need.