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Give a Gift That Creates a Better World

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The holidays are upon us and many of us are scurrying around looking for the perfect gifts for our loved ones. Many of those gifts can be found by perusing the pages of The Monthly Aspectarian. Gifts to friends and family are great, of course. But during this season especially we should think about adding The World to our gift list. There are a number of non-profit organizations out there that can use your donations this time of year to help create a better world. Here are a few unique ones that help you combine gift-giving to friends and relatives with a gift to the world:

Heifer International (www.heifer.org): Heifer International’s homepage offers the following holiday suggestion: “As we enter this season of joy, our hope for peaceful unity between nations grows stronger. This year, consider giving your loved ones a gift that will help create a better world — changing poverty into prosperity, despondency into hope, strangers into neighbors — and even war into peace.” Gifts to Heifer International allow the organization to supply animals (and training in their care) to hungry families around the world. The animals provide a way for these families to feed themselves and become self-reliant. Children receive nutritious milk or eggs; families earn income for school, health care and better housing; communities go beyond meeting immediate needs to fulfilling dreams. Farmers learn sustainable, environmentally sound agricultural techniques.

Gifts to Heifer can be large or small. For as little as $10, for example, you donate a share of one sheep. $120 supplies one whole sheep. The gift allows struggling families to use the sheep’s wool to make clothes, or sell it for extra income. When the sheep has babies, the well-being of the family expands. The breed of sheep that Heifer supplies is also often superior to traditional breeds. In Bolivia, for example, Carlos Hernandez’s sheep from Heifer International gave three times as much wool as traditional breeds — enough for ponchos for the entire family. If you have a lot of cash to spare, or would like to organize a group giving project, check out the section “Gift Ark.” The page urges you to be an “Ark” angel. Your $5000 donation launches an Ark of 15 different pairs of animals to provide food and income for thirty hungry families around the world. Animals include two flocks of chicks that can help Papua New Guinea families improve nutrition and replenish their land and two cows that can bring milk and income to a Bangladesh village.

Other interesting Heifer ideas include sponsoring a living gift market and their Read to Feed program. The “Living Gift Market” page explains that the gift market is an alternative way for members of a congregation or organization to shop for friends and family while helping to end world hunger. At the Market, shoppers “buy” alternative gifts of animals, such as chicks, goats, sheep, rabbits, pigs, fish, bees and heifers. These animals, along with training in their care, are then given to low-income families around the world. The Read to Feed program has it’s own kid-oriented web site (www.readtofeed.org). The program allows children to change the world by reading books to help end hunger. At the Read to Feed site, kids can do things like take virtual journeys to different countries, test their brainpower and trivia skills, read real stories about children around the world, and explore the Heifer’s “Looks at Books” and recommend their favorite books to other kids.

Heifer International began in the 1930s while the civil war raged in Spain. Dan West, a Midwestern farmer and Church of the Brethren youth worker, got the idea for the organization while ladling out cups of milk to hungry children on both sides of the conflict. It struck him that what these families needed was “not a cup, but a cow.” That thought led to Heifer International, which was named one of the 100 best charities in the United States in the December, 2001 issue of Worth magazine.

Serrv International (www.serrv.org): The slogan for Serrv International is “Gifts That Make a Difference.” Serrv is an acronym for Sales Exchange for Refugee Rehabilitation Vocation. The organization was started in 1949 by the Church of the Brethren to help refugees in post WWII Europe. The organization continued to grow and in the year 2000, SERRV sold $5.7 million in handicrafts, coffee, chocolate and other products made by low-income artisans and farmers in developing countries around the world. One interesting gift idea is Serrv’s gift basket. Click on the link on the home page and you’ll see the basket (actually it arrives in a Fair Trade/Equal Exchange tote bag). The $48 gift includes a 6 oz. package Whole Cashews, a 3.5 oz. Divine Dark Chocolate, a coffee mug from Ten Thousand Villages, and a 12 oz. package Mind Body & Soul Coffee.

Of course, you can find many Fair Trade-type items right here in Chicago. No doubt many of the advertisers in The Monthly Aspectarian carry items that have been made by non-sweatshop labor. The key is to ask. You probably won’t get a straight answer at someplace like Target or Wal-Mart, but your small retailers often know the history behind their purchases.

Where did you get that jacket?: I love unusual jackets — it’s a signature type of thing with me. I’m often asked where I get them, and I’m happy to share that information since many of them come from either MarketPlace Handwork of India or Venus Imports. Both companies (one a non-profit, the other regular) work directly and fairly with local artisans who create clothing, housewares, and jewelry. All the products are great gift ideas. Look for the labels at your local shops or check out their web sites. MarketPlace Handwork of India (www.marketplaceindia.org) has for the last seventeen years given women in India opportunities to reach their potential. Economic empowerment is the first step, and sales support that objective. In addition to earnings, these women are now bringing about changes in their families, neighborhoods and society at large. The Venus Imports’ URL (www.artvision-viroqua.com/VenusImports.html) is so long that it might be easier to go to google.com and type in the key words Venus Imports. Their link tops the search list. Venus was founded by Ron and Noga Turk of Janesville, Wisconsin, who started the import company in the mid-1990s as way to help pay for their penchant for world travel. Venus’s Katmandu factory in Nepal employs thirty fulltime workers who work in a clean environment, receive a steady income well above the Nepali standard of living, are empowered through floor meetings and voluntary overtime, and receive annual quality and productivity bonuses. Both MarketPlace and Venus represent the types of companies with which we should all be trying to do business.

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Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Ms. Montgomery-Clifford has a Master's Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in June 2002 and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues in the Fall of 2002. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at 773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com.

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