As the 12 Days of Giving Back wrap up, we wanted to give everyone out there a chance to share your ideas for simple, easy, yet meaningful ways that you can give back this holiday season. We’ve collected a few ideas from fellow bloggers and blog readers throughout the past 11 days, so let’s start with those:
– Celeste W suggests doing your holiday shopping at Ten Thousand Villages, a fair-trade social enterprise. Many of its sources for crafts are nonprofits; all support fair trade and dignity for people with low incomes across the world.
– Marc Pitman suggests that those interested in an animal-related causes look to the Alabama Spay/Neuter Clinic as an interesting organization. ALSPAY is doing a “Merry FIXmas” to promote spaying and neutering pets, especially for people that aren’t able to afford the surgery. They also have a feral cat program that significantly cuts down on pet euthanasia and provide focused calls to action for how you can help.
– John Haydon suggests looking into kidsareheroes.org, a website created for showcasing and recognizing kids when they do outstanding things in the community. Kids are Heroes hopes to help inspire more children to do something more than they would have done on their own, as they can see what other kids are doing.
– Annie Sorensen says: “What about reading something to a child? Or giving a book to someone for no reason? Or taking someone to a library that’s never been? I am such a lover of reading and an advocate for how much self-education can inspire people.”
– A blog commenter, Liz, suggests Building Tomorrow. BT chapters and supporters provide challenge grants to communities equal to land and construction materials for a new academy while local community members and family and friends of future BT students volunteer 20,000 hours of their time to construct each academy. BT currently works in Uganda, identifying areas with the greatest number of children with the least access to a primary school. Their holiday campaign is called “The Best Gift. Ever.” Check it out.
Now: what’s your idea? Tell us in the comments section!
I’d like for us all to give ourselves the gift of quiet time – to permit ourselves to sit alone in a room reading a book or just meditating on life with not a present or a care in the world to distract us.