Monday, December 1, 2008

A Few Of My Favorite Things - Alternative Christmas Gifts

Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, and brown paper packages have been on my mind lately. Not to mention a few other things, including Julie Andrews.

I remember as a little girl I always looked forward to the Christmas season because this movie would come on television and my mom would let me stay up and watch it. It's just one of those special childhood memories. Maybe that's when my love for musicals was born.

So...since I've had that song stuck in my head for several weeks now, I thought I'd do a couple of posts on some of my favorite things that I'll just pick randomly. And since it's that time of year I thought I would start things off by highlighting some of my favorite alternative Christmas gifts. These are all organizations with whom I have personal experience.




World Vision - As taken from their website, "World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice." World Vision has a gift catalog that has loads of different "gifts" that you can donate in honor of someone. We have done this several times for various family members and we love it.

They have their gift catalog conveniently online
here. It's probably my most favorite thing to give. You can also sponsor a child. I hope to be able to sponsor a child with the same birthdate as each of my children one day.

For those of you who are local, my friend,
Christina, is hoping to raise money to buy a well soon. Would you consider helping? Get in touch with her and let her know!



Kiva - As taken from their website, "Kiva lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world - empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty." This is a really neat organization that raises funds to loan money to help people in developing countries start or expand their small businesses. Once the money is repaid by the entrepreneur, you can pick another entrepreneur to help or receive the money back. I think it's a great gift for small business owners, like my mom and my sister, Jaclyn.



Heifer International - Their approach is to help "people obtain a sustainable source of food and income." It is similar to World Vision. They are near and dear to me because we always raised money for animals through them when I was kid in vacation bible school. *grin*

There are so many different organizations out there to give a "gift" through. Do you have any favorites?

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