Alternative Gift Giving

Katie D.

December 15, 2009 - 6:03 PM

'Tis the season of gift giving and massive shopping. It's also a time that many University of Oregon students get to see their families for the first time in months, and have the opportunity to remember what's important in life: family, friends, and being secure in the knowledge of love and support of those around you.

I am so thankful to be back in Colorado, and to have the chance to be with family for the holidays. I hope all my readers have this chance as well.

I've spent a good amount of time thinking about gifts since finals have ended and the frenzy has passed. I'm not great at gift-giving. At least, not in the traditional sense. I don't think I've ever done my Christmas shopping at a mall. First, because I don't like malls. Second, because I've decided that my consumer power and creativity adds up to much more meaningful and powerful gifts when I choose to give alternative gifts for the holidays.

For years growing up, this meant lovingly made handcrafts, from ornaments to scarves and latch-hook rugs. It also meant years of poems as gifts, especially for my grandparents. For several years now, my sister and I have given a book to my parents with pictures and a list of milestones and activities from the year. While it nearly always succeeds in the goal of making both parental units tear up, it is also a huge time commitment that sees Little Sister and me waking up in the wee hours of Christmas morning to desperately try to finish the thing. (If parents are reading this, I am by no means saying that there isn't a journal coming this year. But no promises, either)

I have also embraced the semi-alternative option of shopping at craft fairs and other local shops. Living in Eugene with the Saturday Market close at hand has made this goal astronomically easier. I love thinking that the Christmas gift I give a friend or family member is also helping out some local artist or farmer from my own community. Plus, if that gift recipient really wants another bottle of lotion from Chain Store of the Day, I'm sure they're capable of going to buy it themselves. What's made in Eugene is often not available anywhere near suburban Colorado.

But I also have a deep connection with even more alternative gifts. Four years ago, my main Christmas present from my parents was a goat. A little plastic goat that stood for something much bigger. They had donated money to Heifer International, a sum that provided a goat to a family somewhere far away from Centennial, Colorado. A family that really needed the income and nutrition a goat can provide.

Heifer International is one of my favorite organizations. They do wonderful work on the global battle against poverty. They give healthy livestock to families, and also provide them with training for care of the animal, how to use the manure as fertilizer, and support in sustainable agricultural techniques. In addition to providing that one family with the ability to support itself, Heifer goes one step further and requires that the first offspring of that donated animal be given to another local family, so that the gift keeps on giving.

In 2007, my family's gift to the extended family was a water buffalo through Heifer International. I can't promise that the cousins loved receiving it as much as I loved giving it, but in my mind it was the perfect massive, ungainly, and beautiful Christmas gift.

This year I've got alternative giving on the mind. I think my group of choice this time around is a Guatemalan project I have been associated with in the past. Escuela de la Montaña is a Spanish school for foreigners, where travelers come for individual instruction from trained teachers (see my past blog on this Guatemala trip). In addition to receiving quality language training, travelers eat meals with local families, hear lectures from community members and political leaders, learn to cook traditional food, and have a chance to interact with the local children. All this activity supports not only the teachers and the host families, but a fabulous array of aid projects designed to help the community as a whole.

I enjoyed the electricity and running water the school had put in place less than a year before my arrival. I also heard about students supported through scholarships at the Escuela de la Montaña. Middle schools and high schools in Guatemala are not free, so most children don't ever have the chance to continue their educations, even if the families want them to have that chance.

Today I received an email that encouraged me to donate to the school, and described a new project: a community library. Not only is that a cause I want to give my money to, I hope to someday go back to Guatemala and work in that library! They are hoping for computers with internet access, consistent job training and computer literacy classes, and maybe even tutoring programs for both the children attending school and those who are not able to go. I cannot imagine anything better than arriving in that tiny rural town with a backpack full of children's books and encyclopedias to spend a month or two teaching lessons and maybe taking some of my own.

There are hundreds of other organizations I love and support, and hope that others will, too. I believe strongly in the importance of using this time of the year to give gifts larger than our consumer needs. This Christmas I'm giving either gifts made myself, gifts from local artists, or gifts that give back to the world at large. And what I'm asking for are gifts I truly need: a new backpack, books for my thesis, new kitchen knives. (Plus craft supplies from the grandmother who insists on always getting me something that will make me truly happy, not just in possession of another needed item.)

I imagine that most of us have quite enough random stuff sitting in our rooms. If I'm going to contribute to that random stuff, it's at least going to be something original and unique. But I'd rather get something meaningful for the larger world.

I hope you will, too.

Happy holidays!

My favorite organizations for alternative gift-giving:

1. Escuela de la Montana (support community projects and scholarships)

2. No More Deaths (provide supplies and medical support for migrants)

3. Heifer International (provide animals for farmers)

4. Volunteers in Medicine (provide medical care to low-income individuals without health insurance)

5. Habitat for Humanity International

PS: as an extra-alternative gift, give that particularly adventurous person in your life the gift of a week-long Spanish study in Guatemala. Check out the Escuela de la Montaña website, or their sister school, at http://www.plqe.org/.  The quality of instruction is phenomenal, and the experience is unforgettable.