Giving

As the news from Haiti keeps pouring out of our radios and televisions, I doubt that it's just me that has felt the pang to do something. Giving to our community, nation and world is something we all say is a good thing to do, but unfortunately it gets shuffled down to the bottom of the to-do list until there's a real crisis that we can see right in front of us. One of my New Year's resolutions was to give more but I'm very sorry that it had to be under these circumstances.
There's lot of ways we can give, not just with money but with our time also. I have a couple things here locally that I give my time too but I wanted to be able to give a monetary gift (however small) to an organization that works more on a national or global scale. We've all had a tough year and when it comes down to another expense, I know the daunting task of trying to cover it. But if I start adding up all I do have and expenses I manage to cover, I realize how darn lucky I am!
Then I thought, what if I trick myself a little to set aside money to give? My bank rounds up every purchase I make to the next dollar and puts the change in my savings account. It's not a lot of money but regardless of what I feel I'm able to put away, at least there's always a few dollars going there every week. I've been lucky enough to be able to sell a few of the products of my hobby, the thing that makes me happy and keeps me sane when I come home from my real life job. What if I took a little of that and donated it? Then I thought - wait! What if I take $1 from every pendant I sell this year and give that to charity? What about $1 from every item I sell this year? So that's what I'm going to do.
A non-profit that I'm very excited about is Heifer International. Instead of giving money to communities and family in need, they give livestock. Check out the link for the whole amazing process! This organization helps people all over the world (they were in Haiti before, during and since the earthquake), including the U.S.. Based on my records for 2009, I should be able to give some honeybees, some chicks, and a llama. But I'm shooting for the heifer!