Giving for Good

Each of us has important people in our lives whom we like to honor with tokens of love, gratitude, and affection. The quest to find meaningful gifts that will be enjoyed and not stowed can be daunting, expensive, and exhausting. I have assembled a smattering of ideas for alternative gifting that I hope will help and inspire you. 

Honor the Person Who Needs Nothing with a Gift that Keeps on Giving 

• Consider making a gift to Kiva in his or her name. Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Here’s how it works: You make a gift to Kiva in the amount of $25 or more in honor of someone. Kiva notifies the individual about your gift with an invitation to search through the Kiva database of over 5,000 loans and select a borrower. When the loan is repaid, the process repeats! 
• At Oxfam Unwrapped YOU choose the gift when you honor someone. (For example: A Christmas donkey for $150 or a toilet for $50.) You receive a humorous gift card to send. 
• Heifer International works in much the same way. You can browse their gift catalogue here. 

Stuck with what to give a grandchild? 

• How about the gift of an adventure with you? Check out the intergenerational offerings at Road Scholar. 
• Or consider a gift to his or her college fund. Ask your son or daughter for info on how to make a contribution. Or, set up a CHET account yourself and take the CT tax deduction.

If you want to give a tangible gift, try these ideas:

Edible Gifts:

• Homemade baked goods.
• A gift certificate to a favorite coffee shop, deli, or restaurant.
• Support a family farmer by shopping at CitySeed Farmers Market (Saturdays and Sundays until Dec 18) OR online through Local Harvest with its catalogue of over 5500 products including fresh fruits, nuts, dried fruits, and non-edibles from beeswax candles to clothing and baskets.

Shop for Good:

•  Make someone’s life better by shopping at Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade retailer, with an online shopping site AND a physical store on Chapel Street. The company strives to improve the livelihood of artisans in developing countries. According to the website, “$140 million in sustainable income has been earned by makers who would otherwise be unemployed or underemployed since our founding in 1946.”
• Shop to benefit a local not-for-profit such as Creative Arts Workshop’s Celebration of American Crafts. 
• Shop at a museum gift shop: Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the Peabody Museum, or the New Haven Museum Shop.
• Give a green and useful gift like LED lightbulbs, good for the environment and for the user’s budget. IKEA is a great place to shop for these; it is the only type of bulb they sell.
• Also at IKEA: For every toy, piece of play furniture, or children's book sold until December 24, the IKEA Foundation will donate $1 supporting children's right to play and develop. The New Haven store is collecting soft toys for the Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, so buy a few extra to put in the donation bin. 

Other Ideas:

• Do you have too many cookbooks? Pass some of them on, perhaps adding tabs for your favorite recipes and decorating with a gadget or two instead of a bow. 
• Make a gift. 
• Do you have too many notecards? Give them, along with a selection of beautiful stamps, to someone who still likes to correspond the old-fashioned way. 
• Divide and repot your plants. (Be sure to keep them warm when you transport them).
• If you have a skill you would like to share with someone, give the gift of lesson(s).

Happy Gifting!

[Note: This is an edited version of an article I wrote for the holiday issue of HomeHaven News, a monthly newsletter for the members of HomeHaven, an organization in New Haven helping seniors to "age in place." While some of the ideas are geared to shopping locally, I hope they will give you ideas for ways to help the community in which you live.]

Joining Hands for a Better World: 12.19.13

On December 3, I set out on a pre-Christmas challenge — to post a tip a day we can collectively follow with the goal of making the world a better place. 

Today’s suggestion: Honor the Person Who Needs Nothing with a Gift that Keeps on Giving 

You all have people like this on your list. Perhaps they are trying to downsize. Or they only read books on their kindle now. They have a drawer full of new socks and every kitchen gadget imaginable. They no longer wear ties.

What to do?

It’s gotten late in the day, so I will do this post in two parts. Today’s idea is geared towards a person who is computer savvy.  

Consider making a gift to Kiva in his or her name.

Kiva is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.

Here’s how it works: You make a gift to Kiva in the amount of $25 or more in honor of someone. Kiva notifies the individual about your gift. The person you honored with the gift searches through the Kiva database and selects a borrower, then makes a loan, gets repaid, and repeats! The choice of who should get the loan is theirs. There are currently over 5,000 loans from which to choose. Learn more here. 

Since Kiva was founded in 2005, there have been over 1,023,445 Kiva lenders and $507,063,975 in loans. The repayment rate is over 99% Kiva has been awarded Charity Navigator's highest rating.

That’s it for today. Come back tomorrow for an idea for the person who does not go online, for whatever the reason.“See” you then.

“All together now,” as the Beatles once sang. Let’s see how much good we can do over the next few weeks.

Saturday Short Subjects: Giving for Good

A few nights ago we watched Happy, a film in  which director Roko Belic travels the world in search of the answer to the question: What makes a person happy? He discovered some of the happiest people in some of the most surprising situations and places [surprising to me, at least, with my with First World Problems]. There was, however, a common characteristic among the happiest people the world over. They all found joy in doing good for others.

Doing a bit of good might be just the thing to lift your spirits if you find yourself in a post-holiday funk.

Here’s an easy way to get started.

Share the joy of Kiva, an organization founded to “empower people around the world with a $25 loan.” You can make a donation yourself, or share the joy of Kiva with a loved one.

The founders of Kiva “envision a world where all people - even in the most remote areas of the globe - hold the power to create opportunity for themselves and others.” They “believe providing safe, affordable access to capital to those in need helps people create better lives for themselves and their families.”

Here’s how a gift to Kiva works.

• In brief, you, the lender, select a project from the catalog of loan requests available on the Kiva site, which includes information about the project and the person who is requesting the loan. You can peruse all the projects or narrow your search based on geographical area or project type. 
• You then add your donation to the funding request. 
• When the project goal is met, Kiva funds the project. 
• The borrower repays the loan. 
• Once your loan is repaid, you can make another loan, donate the money to Kiva, or get your original loan amount back.

Since Kiva was founded in 2005, nearly 867,000 Kiva lenders have provided loans totaling over $389,000, with a repayment rate of over 99%.

Kiva has achieved a very high rating from the Charity Navigator site. 

May we all find peace and happiness in the days ahead.

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).

Freebies and Tips in Time for Christmas

Ho, Ho, Ho. It may be only Tuesday, but I have some good stuff for you.

FOR THE KIDS (and the Young at Heart)

• Send a personalized call from Santa to the favorite people in your life. 
• Visit NORAD (as in North American Aerospace Defense Command) Tracks Santa. On Christmas Eve follow Santa as he makes his way around the world.  Visit Countdown Village each day leading up to Christmas for a new activity. 
• Let it Snow. Go to the Google homepage. Type in “let it snow.” Hit Enter. Watch what happens. This article on the abc news blog lists some other Easter Eggs you may have missed. So take a little break and have some free fun!

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THINGS GREEN

• Make your own 2011 Green Scrapbook. Google has given you a fun way to take a quick tour through this year’s top environmental searches. Here is the link to mine. And, yes, I learned a few things during this brief experiment.

LAST MINUTE GIFT IDEAS

• For the person who has everything, consider a gift to Kiva in his or her name. Kiva makes micro loans ($25) to worthy individuals around the world. Here’s how it works: Choose a borrower. Make a loan. Get repaid. Repeat if you wish. The choice is yours. Since Kiva was founded in 2005, there have been over 652,000 Kiva lenders and $265 million in loans. The repayment rate is almost 99%!
• For a truly unique gift, check out personal genome service 23andMe, who is offering a discount of $23  on their kits through December 27. All 23andMe needs is a little spit in a vial, and you are on your way to unlocking the secrets of your DNA. 23andMe provides genetic testing for over 100 traits and diseases, as well as DNA ancestry. If you are even remotely interested, check out their site. The videos are concise, easy to understand, and entertaining to watch.

Happy Holidays.