Some Presents Keep On Giving
Stumped for the perfect present to give that person on your list who has everything? How about a donkey with cart? A water buffalo? Perhaps a night in a Skid Row shelter?
No, these aren’t joke gifts. What’s more, they don’t actually go to the person on your list; instead, they will be made in honor of that person . As for the gifts themselves, the donkey will go to a woman farmer in Central Africa, the buffalo will help a starving family in Kenya, and the night in a shelter will benefit one of the homeless in Los Angeles.
This unusual shopping list is offered by Alternative Gift Markets, an umbrella organization for 10 ecumenical relief agencies. The group’s 1989-90 catalogue includes about 25 special gifts for the world’s hungry and sick, to be delivered in honor of that person on your holiday shopping list.
The gifts also offer an alternative to the holiday season’s materialism, according to Harriet C. Prichard, founder and director of the organization.
For $10 you can buy a bag of maize that will feed a Malawi family of five for a month. A gift of $3 helps fight illiteracy in Bangladesh by supplying a child with school books and supplies, and $40 buys a pig for a Thai farmer. Other gifts provide for eye-cataract surgery, vaccinations and dental care.
Alternative Gift Markets sends your gift overseas or locally. You receive a holiday card with a description of the gift for each person on your list in whose honor a gift was purchased.
To buy gifts, attend a mini-market at one of the many churches involved in the project; call (800) 842-2243 for the location of a church in your area. Or ask for a catalogue at the same phone number. For more information, write Alternative Gift Markets, HCR 6682, Lucerne Valley, Calif. 92356.
And if you love animals, how about adopting a wolf for that special someone on your holiday list?
For $20 (tax-deductible) you can help pay for the food, medical care and habitat of a wolf at Wolf Haven America, a 60-acre sanctuary in Tenino, Wash.
Your special friend will receive a card that welcomes new adopters, plus a biography of the adopted wolf, a parchment certificate and an “I Love Wolves” button and pencil.
Now that’s a gift to howl about.
Wolf Haven America, 3111 Offut Lake Road, Tenino, Wash. 98589, phone (206) 264-HOWL.
