GODSTUFF

GIVE GIFTS THAT TRULY WILL BE CHERISHED

“Giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
— Maya Angelou

It’s been a rough year. With the economy in shambles, many of us are looking at Christmas and Hanukkah with new eyes and wondering whether the season will be more merry than maudlin.

The Bible — the shared holy Scripture of the Jewish and Christian traditions — talks about the blessings that come in giving to others, particularly to the poor and disenfranchised. So on the eve of the last shopping weekend before Christmas and Sunday night’s beginning of Hanukkah, I’d like to suggest a few items to add to your shopping list — gifts that truly keep on giving for those among us in need of a hand up more than any pretty wrapped present under the tree or next to the menorah.

“Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity,” the great Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said. With this in mind, there are a number of organizations that specialize in gifts that help the poor in the developing world make a living.

• • Heifer International (www.heifer.org) offers a number of options. A donation of $20 will buy a flock of chicks, ducks or geese for a family from Cameroon to the Caribbean. Birds are inexpensive to feed and provide income and sustenance for years. Heifer International calls such livestock “living savings accounts.” For $120, you can buy a poor family a dairy goat, a sheep or a pig — a sow can produce 16 piglets in a year and lives on mere scraps.

• • Bless a child. Donations to the Toys for Tots program of the Marine Corps are way down in Chicago this year. Since 1947, the Toys for Tots program has provided Christmas gifts for children, but this year there are fewer donations and higher demand. Drop a new, unwrapped toy — no guns, stuffed animals (because of possible allergies), DVDs or videotapes, please — at any Harris Bank. Checks can be sent to Toys for Tots, 3034 W. Foster, Chicago 60625.

• • More than 25,000 children worldwide die every day from preventable diseases such as measles and malaria — ailments that cost pennies to prevent. Please consider making a monetary donation to UNICEF (www.unicefusa.org) or purchase a gift in the name of a loved one through UNICEF’s “Inspired Gifts” program (www .inspiredgifts.org). For $50.44, you can buy polio vaccine for 86 children; $17.79 will buy two insecticide-treated mosquito nets to protect children from malaria-bearing and other biting insects, and $11.76 will buy an insulated vaccine case that ensures life-saving vaccines will be properly refrigerated as they’re carried into rural areas.

• • Unfortunately, stressful economic times have sparked a surge in domestic violence. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has seen an increase in calls of nearly 20 percent since last year. Make a donation to organizations such as the National Coalition Against Domestic Battery (www.ncadv.org) or Apna Ghar (www. apnaghar.org) — a Chicago organization that provides services to domestic-abuse survivors in the East Asian communities.

If you have an old cell phone sitting in your drawer collecting dust, consider donating it to NCADV’s “Call to Protect” program, which provides victims of domestic abuse with free mobile phones for emergency situations. Follow the instructions HERE to donate your phone.

• • Perhaps next to that old cell phone you have a few gift cards that are either unused or have just a few dollars left on them. The National Retail Federation reports 81 percent of consumers received at least one gift card last year. An estimated 10 percent of those are never redeemed.

Rather than let them go to waste, why not send them to an organization that will make sure they get into the hands of folks who will actually use them? GiftCardGiver.com collects unused or partially used gift cards and sends them to organizations that sorely need them, such as Habitat for Humanity. To donate gift cards, take a permanent marker and write how much money is left on the card and send it to GiftCardGiver.com, 554 W. Main St., Bldg. A, Suite 200, Buford, Ga. 30518.

• • Christmas, of course, celebrates the birth of Jesus, born to the Virgin Mary — a poor, unwed teenage mother from the developing world. So, this year, how about giving another poor mother the gift of a safe birth? In sub-Saharan Africa alone, an estimated 265,000 die in childbirth each year, and worldwide, 1 million young children die yearly as a direct result of the death of their mothers. Maternity Worldwide (www.maternityworldwide.com) provides medical training, midwifery services and covers medical costs for poor pregnant women in developing countries. A donation of about $70 will cover the cost of an emergency Caesarean in a hospital, and about $23 will sponsor the safe birth for a mother in Ethiopia.

Remember what that angel said: “I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people … unto you this day is born a savior.”