Gifts that Make a Difference

if anyone is scratching their heads on what to get someone for Christmas have a look at the World Vision site http://www.worldvision.com.au/smiles/ for a different concept in gifts that make a difference.

It works like this: Instead of buying someone a present, use those funds to send a much needed gift from the WV Smiles catalogue to a needy person. WV will send u a photo card of the gift you donate and you can then give that photo card to anyone which shows them how "their present" is helping a needy child/family

Merry Christmas everyone and best wishes for 2006

bullmarket

bullmarket said:

if anyone is scratching their heads on what to get someone for Christmas have a look at the World Vision site http://www.worldvision.com.au/smiles/ for a different concept in gifts that make a difference.

It works like this: Instead of buying someone a present, use those funds to send a much needed gift from the WV Smiles catalogue to a needy person. WV will send u a photo card of the gift you donate and you can then give that photo card to anyone which shows them how "their present" is helping a needy child/family

Merry Christmas everyone and best wishes for 2006

bullmarket

Click to expand...

bm,
That's a great idea! Wish I'd seen it sooner!! Thanks for sharing it with us.

I thought for a while how to write this and not sound incorrectly, so apologies upfront.

While sending money abroad looks like a nobble thing to do, we could also see if we could do any difference on this island of ours.

We have kids living in poverty
We have families living in poverty
We have derailed kids who need helping hand to become contributors to our society not destructors
We have sick and abandoned people lost in the cracks of our system
People who wait up to 7 years to have public funded dental checkup
Alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless
Or just lonely and forgotten neighbours

We could spend 10 or 50 billions to make it great, suppose for the same money we can help more people in some other countries, fair point.

Hi Happy

No need to apologise. I totally agree with your view.

Other charities have similar concepts for donating and they are all (local or OS) just as worthy causes. World Vision is one charity I support strongly. Unfortunately we can't support them all.

My original post below is aimed at prompting peoples minds into thinking about alternatives to the traditional Christmas gifts, especially in cases where people might be just exchanging gift vouchers with each other.

Merry Christmas Happy and to whoever might be reading this and best wishes for 2006

bullmarket

Both are great ideas. I know of a person who worked for a major overseas aid organisation. He is also a teacher. He left and started an interesting concept. He matches schools in Australia with schools in Developing countries. The concept, rather than give money (which is useful but can (depending on the Charity) go astray in admin costs and depending on the country, may be lost through corruption, etc), he gets the students in Australia to write to their counterparts in the developing country on a regular basis. They share information about their respective countries and cultures etc. That's it. The concept, one day, these students will be decision makers, hopefully with sense of awareness about the plight of others and determine what can be done. A number of schools have their senior students volunteer to go out at night (under supervision) to assist the St.Vincent De Paul Society to feed the homeless. The students in the lower grades make the sandwhiches, etc. There's a lot that can be done. Perhaps Christmas is a good time think about such matters. Merry Christmas everyone!