Be The Magi

It seems that every grocery store and coffee shop in my neighborhood is doing a toy drive this season. Big bins, everywhere, with festive signs saying drop unwrapped toys and gifts for kids here. Which got us thinking: how, exactly, does a family go about giving in a manner that takes into consideration all the recent scares around pretty much every toy on the shelves? You don't want to pass on to less fortunate families toys for which a recall is going to be issued, say, next month, do you? It's no longer as simple as just going to the toy store and buying one or two things to donate to the local drive. And if you just cut a check - well, that doesn't really involve the kids, does it?

So we want to know - how are you going to go about charitable giving this season, beyond just writing a check or two? And how are you going to get your kids involved? Come up with a great idea for spreading cheer the charitable way and write a post about it (drop a link in to LMJ so that we can find you, and/or leave us a comment with the url), and we'll pull them all together and link them all up in a big share-the-great-ideas-share-the-joy post. Maybe we'll even whip up a brand new, 2007 Gifts Of The Magi button, for sparkles.

Our ideas:

* Take your kids to some local shops, or a local crafts fair, and let them pick out something locally made to donate to a toy drive (or shelter or other worthy organization).

* Books don't contain lead! Have your kids pick their favorite titles from a local bookstore, and donate those.

* Time doesn't contain lead, either - consider putting in some family volunteer time at the local toy drive or food bank or whatever cause is most important to you.

* And please go sign the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act of 2007 (S. 2045) to petition congress on increasing imported product safety!

What are your ideas? Share them, put them into action, write about them - and spread the word. Let's spread some joy!

Comments

[MomOnTheGo]

My daughter and I were at a craft show today, choosing ornaments that would represent donations to World Vision that we were giving on behalf of some important people in our life. She is used to giving things she no longer needs to others who do need them and was excited to be giving roosters and hens to some family friends. I've written about it at: http://blog.reidelizabeth.ca/2007/12/16/a-gift-that-warms-your-heart-and-theirs/

[jen]

We've having a baby over our way - a baby named Volunteerism. It's my ho ho for the season (and year round)

http://droolstreet.blogspot.com/2007/12/just-posts-were-having-baby.html

[Cynthia Samuels]

I know it's too late for this year but I wanted to put this here in case someone wanders by later.
When my kids were little, we used to take one night of Channukah, have no presents, and let each of them pick a charity to which we sent a check. When they were really little I used to write to the entity they chose and ask them if they had time to send some kind of personal thank you. We went from "poor old Jewish people on the Lower East Side" (I kid you not) to Paul Simon's Children's Health Fund, to Lou Rawls United Negro College Fund to Comic Relief.
They've told me often that this participatory philanthropy - combined with ditching a night of gifts for themselves, had quite an impact - and they are both very philantropic young men so I guess it did. Anyway it was fun for everyone and taught us a lot of what our kids cared about, too.

[Samantha McGavin]

I came across this posting, albeit a year late, and thought that you might be interested in an alternative holiday giving site I’ve been working on, that could be a way for kids to give charitable gifts. I’m with a Canadian international social justice organization called Inter Pares (www.interpares.ca), which works in partnership with organizations around the world who are promoting positive social transformation in their societies. We have developed a site called “Give Something Big” (www.givesomethingbig.com) to encourage donations to our organization in exchange for holiday cards. (The name plays on the idea of “giving” the concepts which are our main goals – peace, social justice, and equality – and that they are too big to be wrapped.) When visitors make a gift to the campaign, they receive up to ten printed or electronic cards; they can add their photo to their e-cards, which would be a fun way for kids to personalize the gift, or even create their own through mixing and matching the different gifts and characters. We are looking to generate some word-of-mouth publicity by asking like-minded bloggers if they would spread the word by writing a post about our campaign, embedding our video, and/or posting a button on their blog. Would you be interested? We are able to offer two thank-you gifts in exchange: offering you a link to send up to ten free cards of your own without making a donation, and, if you are interested in publicity for your blog, publicity through the Hello Cool World network (www.hellocoolworld.com), which is the distributor for progressive documentaries like The Corporation and has an audience of over 60,000 like-minded people (mostly in North America). Please have a look at our site, www.givesomethingbig.com, to see if it’s something you would find worth publicizing, and feel free to e-mail me. Thanks so much.