December 2007
More Love, Less Stuff
Stop it. Stop it right now. Stop wrapping that crap.
By Lucinda Michele Knapp
Another shirt they’ll never wear? The same old Starbucks’ card? Another random crystal candy dish, lemongrass-scented candle, Sharper Image alarm clock, Dearfoam slippers? (“Dearfoam” always sounded gross anyway.) Leave ‘em at the store.
Better yet, don’t even GO to the store. The holiday insanity, parking-lot face-offs and shopping-cart races will occur with or without you — but plenty of other causes really do need your support. Instead of maxing out your Mastercard yet again, stop and think. You can actually save money and your sanity, and gift twice: once by donating to a charitable cause and again by dedicating that charitable gift to a friend or loved one.
It’s the real gift that keeps giving.
All Creatures Great and Small
Give the gift of… a giant water reptile? With so many water habitats around the globe at risk, crocodiles are now an endangered species. Oxfam America (oxfamamericaunwrapped.com) lets you donate a lil’ baby croc to areas where the population has been depleted. If dinosaur holdovers aren’t your thing, Oxfam can also help you subsidize the gift of fuzzy, cuddly farm animals to needy families around the world.
For years, The Heifer Project (heifer.org) has made it possible to donate chickens, goats, sheep, cattle and even honeybees to needy families in developing nations, helping them to lift themselves out of poverty with the products — wool, honey, eggs — those animals produce. Now, a special Heifer program is focusing assistance efforts in communities where women are marginalized or forbidden to own property. To gift a woman with her own livestock and the chance to send her daughters to school, visit the “special programs” section of Heifer’s website.
Sponsor a chimpanzee whose mother was killed to feed the illegal bushmeat trade in Africa, and In Defense of Animals: Africa (ida-africa.org) will send you a certificate, updates on your orphan’s progress and even a biography and photo of the exact little guy you’re helping out. Sponsorships start at $15 per month for six months and all donations are tax deductible.
Cards to Green the Grid
If holiday greeting cards are your thing, why not choose one that keeps the warm and fuzzies going long after the card itself has met the recycling bin? Purchase a NativeEnergy (nativeenergy.com/cards) greeting card for family, friends or colleagues, and keep one ton ($12) or six tons ($72) of carbon dioxide pollution out of the air. Your donation will either be directed toward building methane converters on family farms — keeping the families on the farms and the CO2 out of the air — or building wind farms on Native American land — giving indigenous peoples a way to earn a living, while providing green energy to the grid.
Loans Change Lives
Modest Needs (modestneeds.org) is an award-winning charity that helps those in need afford emergency expenses — everyday bank-breakers we’ve all had before: the unexpected auto repair, the unanticipated trip to the doctor, the unusually large winter heating bill — funded exclusively from the “small change” donations of people just like you. With the average gift between $5 and $100 at a time, it’s like “paying it forward” to help a stranger in need.
By “sponsoring” a small businesses or individual in the developing world through Kiva (kiva.org), you can help the world’s working poor make real progress towards economic independence. The friendly folks at Kiva link your donation to a small business or home enterprise: a family’s store in the Dominican Republic, a husband and wife’s small home in need of repairs in Bolivia, a stone quarry business started by a female refugee in Uganda… and countless others. Kiva chooses qualified borrowers and verifies where your money goes, tracking your loan as it is repaid. Throughout the loan (usually 6-12 months), you get email journal updates from the folks you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your money back — plus the knowledge that you’ve helped people begin new lives.
Free the Trees
From Latin America to Asia, Trees for the Future (treesftf.org) plants (and re-plants) forests. They work with local communities to make slash-and-burn agriculture a thing of the past, and help to ensure that the world’s forests remain green. But for every seedling they sow, dozens of trees are still felled the world over. That’s why a gift of planting trees is such a great holiday idea. Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe pick up a live Christmas tree that you can plant after the holidays, or one of those cool fake ones (made of feathers, or pretty recycled aluminum), rather than chopping one down. And in the meantime, go to treesftf.org to avenge all those evergreens (from Yuletides past) that only made it to eight feet tall.
When you send an e-card from Tree Greetings (treegreetings.com), not only do they not chop a tree down to send it to you (your recipient gets a way cool e-card instead), but they plant a baby tree. You can choose where you want it planted (Central America or the U.S.) and how many you want to plant. Then your recipient can take an online tour of the place where their tree will grow.
Less Junk in Their Trunk
It doesn’t take an over-hyped holiday to fill your stocking with unwanted parcels: junk mail arrives every day, year-round, and adds up to more than 41 pounds of useless paper waste per person each year. Greendimes (greendimes.com) doesn’t just stop your (or your gift recipient’s) junk mail — they plant trees too! A membership is a unique gift for family and friends that keeps annoying junk out of their mailbox, while saving trees and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For every Junk Mail Reduction Kit purchased, GreenDimes funds the planting of ten trees.
Hang Loose for the Holidays
Those of us on the west coast are intimately connected to the ocean’s wellbeing, and few folks are more in-tune with the seaside state of affairs than surfers. The Surfrider Foundation (Surfrider.org) organizes beach cleanups and leans on city, state and county governments to keep an eye on the ocean. The Foundation also creates community and in-school education programs, conducts thousands of water quality tests annually and works to protect beaches, beach access and special seaside habitats. A gift membership gives your friend or loved one a snazzy sticker for their car, a year’s worth of the Foundation’s award-winning publication, Making Waves and discounts at a growing number of retailers and restaurants.
Gift Of The Garden
The Chicago Horticultural Society was founded in 1890, and in 1963 was granted the property that today is known as The Chicago Botanic Garden (chicagobotanic.org). The Botanic Garden’s mission is to promote the enjoyment, understanding and conservation of plants and the natural world, and it’s one of the country’s most visited public gardens, consisting of 385 acres featuring 23 display gardens and three native habitats. Membership fees help conservation and horticultural programs, including conservation of rare and endangered plants in northeastern Illinois. Gift memberships include free parking year-round at the Botanic Garden, a garden gift, a subscription to the Botanic Garden’s Garden Talk magazine and discounts on classes, trams and shopping.
Lucinda Michele Knapp is a writer in Los Angeles, where she dwells in year-round fear of holiday shopping ever since a nasty encounter with a large pyramid of Chia Pets. She plans not to leave the house after Thanksgiving.
![[Send]](http://seattle.consciouschoice.com/sendlink/send.gif){kind=small}
Recommend this page to a friend
Top Ten pages recommended to friends:
