Many Small People: Ideas for Holiday Giving (25/30)

African proverb on a piece of the Berlin Wall

     This year I had every intention of doing a series of posts for Advent as I had last year. Then I realized two things: 1. Rotations don't leave much time for the research and effort I wanted to put into said posts. My ideas were going to require quite a bit of study, and I just can't do that this year. 2. I'm not sure what I'd say. Part of the reason I felt I had so much research to do was because I myself am still struggling to comprehend hope, peace, joy, and love, and their implications for my life and the world. They are concepts I have grown up learning about and trying to preserve and develop in my own life, yet the older I get, the more I discover about them, and have to admit that I have a long way to go to living them out. To be honest, the learning experience is not always that encouraging or easy (discovering how closely "hope" is tied to "waiting" is not exactly what you want to learn when there's something you're hoping for, and "love" is an easy concept to talk about, but can be a hard one to live out), but I think it's worth it, and I think it's worth spending the time to learn, meditate, and develop some worthwhile thoughts on these important topics before I try to share my own observations. So, instead of some lofty Advent thoughts, I'm going to try to share some practical, small ways to make a difference this holiday season with your giving and spending. 

Handwarmer mug from an artist
in Maine that a friend bought
me for my birthday.

     Chances are that most people reading this have not yet finished their Christmas shopping, so here are a few ideas for making those remaining gifts count. Firstly, you can shop ethically. This article by Relevant magazine describes steps you can take to become a more ethical shopper, including looking at a company's history, mission statement, and practices. If you want insight into which companies compensate their workers fairly, follow environmental standards, or refuse to use slave labor Ethical Consumer, Good Guide, Rank a Brand, and Free2Work are excellent websites to help you out with that. Secondly, try to shop locally. It might be easier to find gifts from big chain stores, or purchase gift cards from the corporate coffee shops rather than the local family-owned one, but invest in your local community and businesses when you can. The handpainted wine glass from a local artist that you give your friend might cost more than the one you could purchase at a Kohl's, but it'll be a more unique gift for your friend, and you'll be a blessing to the artist, fostering small business and creativity. Sometimes it's hard, or impractical, to shop local (the gift card to the small, local chain won't be much of a gift to someone who doesn't live anywhere near you), but never fear, there are ways to make your more traditional gifts go the extra mile. For instance, if you're going to shop on Amazon, shop through Amazon Smile. Amazon Smile lets you pick a charity and then 0.5% of the price of any eligible purchases is donated to said charity. Sure, 0.5% is not much and some people have argued that there might be downsides to this, but if you're already going to be using Amazon to make your purchases, I say why not use it to support something you care about? You can also change your charity at any time, so perhaps for one purchase you choose World Vision and help tackle causes of poverty and injustice worldwide, then you could choose Every Mother Counts to support efforts to reduce maternal mortality, and for the next purchase you could choose ASPCA and help prevent cruelty to animals. Boom. Small steps, but small steps add up.
     My last suggestion for gift giving is to give gifts that benefit more than just your immediate recipient. Find ways to give your loved ones the gifts they want, while also supporting a good cause. Do you have a child or grandchild who loves animals and just wants a stuffed animal? "Adopt" a species for them through the World Wildlife Fund and they'll get an adorable plushy, as well as a certificate telling them about the animal they've symbolically adopted, while your purchase will go toward protecting that animal and its habitat. Perhaps you have a daughter or wife who wants a fashionable scarf or hat. Boom. Krochet Kids. Each article of clothing they sell is made by a woman in Uganda or Peru, and your purchase helps her support her family and provide a future for her children. Maybe someone in your family is perpetually cold. Get them a blanket from Sackcloth & Ashes and provide a blanket to your local homeless shelter. Tea drinkers can fight AIDS by purchasing the Love Life tea by Harney & Sons. The possibilities are endless. To give you an idea and starting place, at the bottom of this post I've included the some gift ideas, listing them by the name of the charity/foundation you would support with your purchases. It is by no means an exhaustive list though, and I would recommend checking out these lists for further ideas: 

• Forbes: 10 Gifts For the Socially Conscious
• The Good Trade: Gifts That Give Back (for her)
• The Good Trade: Ethical Marketplaces
• Half the Sky Movement: Buy for Good
• Huff Post: Holiday Gifts That Give Back
• LA Times: 11 Gifts That Will Change the World
• Third Eye Mom: Gifts That Give Back
• 18 Cool Christmas Gifts That Are Making a Difference

     You can also bypass the gift, and simply give straight to charity. Before you go out and give to anyone who asks though, a word of caution: charities are not created equal. It's a sad truth, but some "charities" are just there to sucker people out of their money, and some spend more money soliciting donations than they spend on their actual cause. Luckily, there is help wading through the sometimes murky waters. If you want to know who to avoid, the Tampa Bay times has released this list of America's Worst Charities. Many of the bad charities, including the one at the top of the list (Kids Wish Network), use names that are similar to reputable charities, which makes it confusing for donors to sort out who is legitimate. This video helps demonstrate what a popular strategy this is:

If you want to go looking for a charity yourself, Forbes has some tips on how to evaluate a charity, and here are some tips to avoid being scammed. Once you've found one that you're interested in, independent investigative groups like Guide Star and Charity Navigator will help you know if this is a charity worth investing in. If you just want suggestions of a charity to support, Charity Navigator gives their top picks for the best and worst charity for each of 35 different categories here. Consumer Reports also provides their own picks for best and worst charities for 11 categories here. 

While I definitely recommend caution when researching
a charity to support, I also recommend that you don't
believe everything you read on Facebook. This image
has been circulating for years, however its numbers are
misleading at best, and flat-out lies at worst. The numbers
come from a chain email, not Snopes, as the title would
lead you to believe. You can find these "facts" on Snopes,
but only where it is quoting the email, and only before
it completely debunks almost every single number listed.
You can find the Snopes article here. Don't believe
everything you read, fact check before you re-post, and
use reliable sources.

     Just as with gift giving, giving to local charities is an alternative to going through a big organization. For this though, I'd say it depends on what you are trying to support. If you want to donate to a group working across the world, bigger charities are typically a better bet. If, however, you are trying to give to a cause that just impacts your community, giving locally is a great idea. Fighting homelessness is a great cause to look at local organizations. Perhaps there's a business that specifically employs homeless, like Street Bean Espresso in Seattle, or a group that offers free haircuts, food and clothing to the homeless, like NightStrike in Portland, or a church in your area offers meals in the summer and shelter in the winter, like Sonrise Church in Hillsboro. Most churches also have a food bank and/or weekly soup kitchen where you could donate food or time. If you'd rather not associate yourself with a church, many shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries like Ample Harvest are not religiously affiliated, and one in your area (whether religious or not) can often be found with a simple Google search. Perhaps you'd like to donate of yourself physically, e.g. through blood donation, but you're wary of the Red Cross because a meme on Facebook said they weren't great. Whether or not that meme is accurate (not only do I distrust most pictures with "statistics" that don't include their sources, but I discuss at the left why at least one image is false), you can still donate locally. Many large hospitals have their own blood donation centers, like Boston Children's Hospital, and they'll not only treat very nicely, but you'll know that you are helping someone right in your own community. If you prefer animals to people, many shelters are always in need of pet supplies and volunteers to care for the animals, or even provide a foster home until they're adopted. If you can't adopt an animal yourself, but would like to help someone else, you could try donating money to the shelter and specifying that you'd like it to go toward reducing someone's adoption cost. The same sort of thing applies to child adoption as well. You might not be in the place to adopt a child, but organizations like Show Hope let you donate toward a family that wants to adopt, but lacks the funds. Honestly, there are far too many excellent charities for me to list, but seek and ye shall find, or ask and I'll gladly give out ideas. 

     Oh, and one more idea a friend of mine shared, which is neither gift giving, nor giving to charity, but which I think still deserves a mention. You don't have to be Greek Orthodox to appreciate this idea of teaching your children about caring for other people. One mother has been creating "Blessing Bags" filled with sandwiches, carrots, napkins, cookies, water, etc. and then going around her city with her children to distribute them to the people they see on the street. It's part of a tradition she's started with her family of performing RACK -Random Acts of Christmas Kindness, one act for each day of December until Christmas day. Obviously I'm not a parent yet, but I think this whole tradition is a pretty good way of taking the focus off consumerism of the holiday season, and replacing it with quality time with your kids while teaching them how to give to others.
     So go forth and give this holiday season, and may your giving be a blessing to many.

Gift Ideas

• Amani ya Juu -The name is a Swahili saying that means "Peace from Above." The mission of Amani ya Juu is to provide work for marginalized African women, and provide the world with fair trade goods created by these women. They have a wide selection of home goods, bags, jewelry, and apparel.
• Counter Culture Coffee -In an example of small steps making big differences, Counter Culture Coffee gives 1 penny from each pound of their direct-trade, sustainably produced coffee to community development projects in the areas where they buy their coffee. Those pennies add up, and during this holiday season, they've upped it to a nickel for each pound, so your purchase goes 5x further.
• Feed -Feed was started as an effort to provide school meals to developing countries to help feed not only their bodies, but their minds as well. Each item you purchase, from bags to bracelets to aprons, tells you just how many meals your purchase provides.
• Feed My Starving Children -The idea behind FMSC is simple: artisans around the world make products which FMSC purchases and sells online. The profits from these sales are then used to provide meals to the malnourished in the communities where these artisans work, so the community is supported in two different ways. There are lots of options here, especially home goods and apparel. 
• Food for Thoughts Cards -This organization is one way to help fight hunger. For each card you purchase, Food for Thoughts provides the value of a sandwich to a food pantry.
• Joggo Bags -Joggo (Journey to Greater Good) only sells bags, and even then only two, but the purchase of these stylish, fair-trade bags helps a displaced child, like one of the many Syrian refugees, continue their education, even as they're far from home.
• Krochet Kids -When a couple of dudes taught themselves how to crochet in high school and started calling themselves the "Krochet Kids," they had no idea that years later they'd be using that same name to for a company whose goal is to help impoverished women in Uganda and Peru provide for themselves and their families. The process is simple: women are taught to crochet, and then their products are sold to a wider market, with the profits going back to the women. Each item, whether hat, bag, scarf, etc., features a tag signed by the woman who made it, and if you're curious about their numbers and where your money goes, Krochet Kids provides an annual report for anyone to view. 
• LaRitzy -For the beauty queen looking for an alternative to beauty products with questionable ingredients and dubious animal testing practices, LaRitzy offers a monthly subscription of beauty boxes filled with vegan and cruelty-free products.
• Local + Lejos -Another way to support artisans across the world, Local + Lejos helps sell homemade goods from around the globe, eliminating further middle men and markups. This keeps the prices lower for the purchaser, and helps make sure more of the money from the sale goes directly to the artist.
• Love Your Melon -Another option for hats, Love Your Melon is out to children with cancer. The description of each product tells you exactly how the money from that purchase would be used, with some proceeds going toward cancer research at different institutions, and some going toward providing hats for children with cancer.
• Made By Survivors -Made By Survivors features wares made by survivors of human trafficking. They have jewelry, bags, scarves, home goods, and plenty of wonderful gifts to choose from.
• OneHope Wine -I've never tasted OneHope wines, but if you've got a wine lover in the family, and you'd also like to support a cause, you might want to give OneHope a look. Working through the OneHope Foundation, most (possibly all) of their wines support a cause, but not all the same one, so you can pick and choose a wine based on the cause or the taste. There's a rosé for the prevention of ovarian cancer, a pinot noir that helps provide clean water, a zinfadel to support our troops, a sparkling wine to provide meals to kids, and so forth and so on.
• Sackcloth & Ashes -Need a lovely blanket, either for inside or outside? Look no further! For each blanket you buy, Sackcloth & Ashes donates one to your local homeless shelter.
• Seattle Chocolates -Who doesn't love chocolate?! Actually, don't answer that. I know these people exist, and some are even in my family, but we're just gonna forget that and move on. ;) Anywho, here's the chance to get someone you love chocolate that is Rainforest Alliance Certified AND also helps fight hunger in America. Win-win.
• Sudara -To me, few things sound more comfortable than "punjammies," so if you want to be super comfortable, as well as help women in India escape prostitution, and stay out, check out some of the clothing items at Sudara.
• Ten Thousand Villages -Wanna know where the Fair Trade movement started? Look no further than the trunk of Edna Ruth Byler's car in 1946. In the almost 70 years since then, the movement has spread and Byler's business grew in Ten Thousand Villages, selling almost anything you could want, and supporting artisans around the world. 
• Thistle Farms -If you want to help fight sex trafficking, prostitution, and addiction right here in the US, Thistle Farms might be a good place to look for a gift. There are quite a few options. Your choices include body butter, essential oils, coffee, mugs, jewelry, greeting cards, and quite a few things in between. 
• Uncommon Goods -Support small artists from the comfort of your own home! Uncommon Goods seeks to provide an online marketplace where artists can sell their wares to a larger customer base than they would get simply traveling to craft fairs and trade shows. A wide variety of artists are involved, so you can find just about anything there.
• World Wildlife Fund -There are so many options at the WWF gift center, especially for an animal lover. There are plush toys, reusable cups, framed pictures, bonds, or, perhaps one of the most awesome things, species adoption. That is correct. You can adopt an endangered animal as a gift. Sure, you don't actually get to own said animal, but you do get a certificate, card, gift bag, and plush toy, all on top of the knowledge that you're helping to "protect wild animals and their habitats."