Give a gift of hope

Start a new holiday tradition this year by honoring your family and friends with a gift that spreads hope and provides long-term opportunity to families living in poverty. Heifer International has over 20 gifts to choose from, including heifers, sheep, llamas, goats, chicks, geese, honeybees, trees, and more. You can make a real difference in the life of a struggling family, helping them obtain a sustainable source of food and income and lighting the way along the road to self-reliance.

Heifer’s mission is to work with communities around the world to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth. “Passing on the Gift” – a cornerstone of Heifer’s approach – creates a living cycle of sustainability that develops community and enhances self-esteem. As people share the offspring of their animals, along with their knowledge, resources, and skills, an expanding network of hope, dignity, and self-reliance is created that reaches around the globe.

Take a moment to learn more about Heifer International, and browse the gift catalog.

Citizen philanthropy funds classrooms

from the site:
“DonorsChoose.org is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund.”

A DonorsChoose.org gift certificate would make a wonderful holiday “gift that gives back” for someone special. Your recipient will be able to use the gift certificate to fund their choice of project(s). Alternately, you can fund a project in someone’s honor. Donations are tax-deductible, of course.

In 2007, donors from all walks of life have funded $4,215,709 worth of resources for students in need.

Change the world

ONE voice.
ONE vote.
ONE chance every four years.
Change the world.
ONE.org

“…end the kind of stupid poverty that means a child dies of hunger
in a world of plenty.”

-Bono

Heroes Against Hunger

Every 3.6 seconds, one person dies of hunger. Most of the time this hunger is not caused by famine, but by disaster, war or the ravages of extreme poverty.

Join the Mercy Corps Heroes Against Hunger program to fight malnourishment and plant seeds of hope in poor communities around the world. Your monthly support goes to programs that not only speed critical food to families in need, but also teach vital agricultural skills and give nutritional advice to help those families ensure their food needs for years to come.

Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1.3 billion in assistance to people in 100 nations. Mercy Corps is a Charity Navigator ‘Four Star Charity’.

Fight genocide

Divestment is one of the key tactics that was successfully used to end apartheid in South Africa and it can help end the violence in Darfur, too.

Join me in fighting the genocide by urging Fidelity and other investment institutions to divest their holdings from companies that help fund the genocide. Click the banner above to sign the Divest for Darfur petition now and help cut off financial support for the government-sponsored violence. You can make a difference.

Diplomacy is crucial, but economic pressure may prove an even more powerful way to force Sudan to cooperate with international efforts to end the genocide. Sudan has been very responsive to economic pressure in the past so we have reason to hope that they will pay heed to the divestment efforts.

The Save Darfur Coalition is an alliance of over 180 faith-based, advocacy and humanitarian organizations whose mission is to raise public awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur and to mobilize a unified response to the atrocities that threaten the lives of more than two million people in the Darfur region.

Set love free

“The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border.”

-Pablo Casals

Support education for all

Worldwide, 77 million children lack access to even basic education. Many children, particularly girls, are kept from school due to uniform or text book expenses or the loss of their contribution to family income. Poor countries also lack the funds to train and retain qualified teachers, provide teaching materials, and build an adequate number of schools.

Representatives Nita Lowey (D-NY) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) have stepped up and introduced the Education for All Act to give tens of millions of children the education that will lift them out of poverty.

Education is a tool to transform the world, one student at a time. Education raises incomes, reduces infant mortality, slows the spread of HIV-AIDS, and saves lives. This is an investment that pays rich dividends.

Will you write a letter to your member of Congress asking them to support the Education for All Act?

Gifts for Mom that do good

Here are a few unique gift ideas for Mother’s Day from Oxfam America Unwrapped.

Sweeten Mom’s day with a symbolic gift of Fair Trade honey. You’ll assist small-scale farmers striving to make a decent living producing honey, coffee, grains, and cheese.

Support HIV-affected women in Africa who make handcrafted jewelry, handbags, and other accessories from beads to support their families.

Honor Mom with a donation to support indigenous women who produce craftwork to earn their living.

Monday Melee 4/02

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Cutthroat competition. Don’t get me wrong: I think competition is often beneficial, and it has certainly been at the root of quite of lot of innovation and progress. What I object to is the practice of winning by ruthless and unjust means; e.g., stepping on, defaming, using, stealing from, scheming against, and otherwise abusing others in order to come out on top. I would prefer to see people compete and achieve success in positive ways.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
Once again, the President wants to put a person with clear industry allegiances in charge of a government body intended to safeguard the public interest. On March 1, 2007, Bush nominated Michael Baroody as chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Baroody is a senior executive with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a trade group that regularly opposes product safety regulation and pollution prevention laws. NAM has gone so far as to call for weakening the CPSC, an organization that exists to keep manufacturers from selling products that put us and our families at risk. During his tenure at NAM, Baroody has led opposition to laws that protect children and the public from unsafe products and toxic health threats. source: Organic Consumers Association

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
Clutter. It’s annoying and hard to tame.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
Our local food bank distributed over 21 million pounds of food last year to needy families and individuals.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
‘Dependable’ is my middle name. Well, not literally, although it would have demonstrated uncanny perception and a keen sense of humor on my parents’ part. I can always be counted on to follow through on commitments and to get things done in a competent and timely fashion.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
Feasible, affordable, long-term alternative energy solutions available to everyone, the world over, right now.

Make poverty history

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have too much…it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Monday Melee 2/26

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
War. Time and again, diplomacy fails (or is never attempted) and war erupts, blazing a trail of destruction, violence, and death. Why must we resort to killing each other?

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, political appointees, not researchers and scientists, have the last word on standards recommendations for air pollutants.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I am highly distressed by the situation in the Middle East.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
During a recent school-sponsored food drive, a student asked for canned goods as her only birthday presents so that she could donate them.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I am creative and resourceful.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like to be able to successfully divide my attention between two tasks; for example, read a book while having an interesting conversation. Multi-tasking on steroids.

Injustice for all?

It has been five years since US authorities first transferred “war on terror” detainees to the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite widespread international condemnation, hundreds of people of more than 30 nationalities are still there: without charge, and with little hope of obtaining a fair trial. Though US authorities have repeatedly called the detainees “terrorists” and “killers”, not a single person has been convicted of a crime.

Five years of lawlessness is enough. Join activists worldwide in showing solidarity with the detainees and their families, demanding once more, and louder than ever, that the detention facilities at Guantánamo be closed.

Visit the Amnesty International action center.

In honor

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Quotations :: Martin Luther King, Jr

The perfect gift

Looking for unusual gifts? Need something for the person who has everything? How about a sheep or a camel? Visit Oxfam America Unwrapped to select a gift that helps people in need. Oxfam America is a non-profit organization that works to end global poverty through saving lives, strengthening communities, and campaigning for change.