If you’re interested, another great charity is Kenya Kids Can. It’s run by a friend of mine who won the CNN Hero Award last year. He distributes food to school children and sets up computer centers.

The picture of Joel on the site is adorable and it reminded me so much of the kids I teach here in Japan. It almost made me cry right here at work.

The fact that he is an HIV+ orphan is incomprehensible to me, and those pictures somehow turn the HIV epidemic in Africa into something much more real and horrific.

We are so much richer than we realize.

Again, THANK YOU! And your sis-in-law – is she amazing or what?! We might become roommates next semester!

Merry Christmas, Trent!

Whether gifts to charities in someone else’s name make good gifts deserves some careful thought, though. While a gift in my name to one of MY favorite charities would make me very happy, I have to say that a gift to someone ELSE’s pet charity in my name would not seem like a very thoughtful one. That would be a little like the cook in the household giving a shiny new kitchen gadget to the non-cook – more oriented to the needs or desires of the giver than the recipient.

Attachments to charities are almost as personal as to political causes (and often overlap). I still remember with distaste a wedding invitation I received years ago that asked that in lieu of gifts the guests give donations to a charity that I personally thought was a cynical fraud. I could appreciate the thought that the bride and groom, being well established in life, needed no gifts and wanted to do good, still there was sure no “joy in giving” in writing out that check.

Nancy

Another good one is the National WW2 museum “Knit Your Bit” campaign. You make scarves and send them to the museum. They work with the VA to distribute them to homeless veterans.

I like these, because they accept actual knitted/crocheted goods, which is a bit easier for me to donate than money. I always have a project going, and I like the more personal touch of donating something I made rather than just giving money. But that’s just me!!

However, I strongly disagree with making donations to charities and then presenting that fact to friends to explain why they won’t be receiving a gift on a holiday.

Giving to a charity has nothing to do with the fact that it’s traditional to give gifts to loved ones at certain times of the year. If a friend has mentioned a particular charity repeatedly and said wistfully that she wished she could make a sizable donation to them, doing so in her name would be a genuine gift, because it’s something she wants. But that’s what a gift is: thinking about someone you care about and figuring out what they’d like to receive. If your friends don’t like getting gifts, that’s a whole separate issue. “Giving” someone the fact that you donated to a charity is a non sequitur and smacks of self-righteousness to boot. “Oh, thanks. Um…I got you these socks with the little reindeer noses on them, ’cause we saw them once and you said how cute they were. I think I’ll go home and feel like a jerk now.”

Give to good charities, and encourage other people to do so. Just don’t try pulling a two-fer with it.

I’m now going to go clean my bathroom, edit my magazine, and renew my subscription to the publicly supported radio station I enjoy, all of which are good and necessary things to do and none of which get me off the hook for going to my mother-in-law’s for Christmas.

My holiday charities are more traditional and domestic: Salvation Army and Toys for Tots. But the point is to find some way to give back and spread the cheer outside your immediate family and friends!