September 5, 2008

NEW YORK – In a tight economy, holiday gifts that also help fight poverty and the world food crisis can go a lot farther than tchotchkes or yesterday's tech trinkets destined for "re-gifting" or recycling. This season's Best Gift catalogue from humanitarian agency Church World Service lets holiday shoppers honor their gift recipients by giving alternative gift donations that fund tools, technologies, training, and supplies to help struggling people around the world rise out of poverty and become self-sufficient.

Alternative gifts aren't new, but a sampling from this year's free Best Gift catalogue from global CWS shows fresh imagination and scope, including everything from solar cooking stoves, wells and drip irrigation systems, to training in disaster preparedness, microcredit loans for women, baby chicks and water buffalos, and rehydration therapy for small children at risk of death from diarrhea.

"So many people in the U.S. are feeling the pressure of high food and energy costs, a slow economy and the mortgage crisis," says Church World Service Executive Director and CEO John McCullough. "People are thinking twice about the high cost of the usual masses of sweaters and gadgets that often don't get used. We're encouraging people to give meaning, not just stuff. It's time to start thinking in terms of ‘life tech.'"

A CWS socially conscious gift from the Best Gift catalogue funds one of the Church World Service development program areas related to the gift, such as agriculture and livestock, emergency and disaster preparedness, care for vulnerable children, water and environment, or women's empowerment.

Give the environmentalist on your list the $62 gift of a solar stove – destined for families like Tibetan farmers in Qinghai Province who now are converting to sustainable sources of clean energy rather than cooking with animal dung.

In honor of a conscientious "chop wood, carry water" friend, a $15 gift can give ten jerry cans that each hold five gallons of fresh water to women and girls who daily walk miles to fetch water for their families.

For the sports fan on you list, give a $10 soccer ball to help build community among displaced youths living in camps in Darfur.

For $10, give a gift that multiplies: a pair of rabbits to farmers like those in drought-affected Zimbabwe.

A $25 literacy class gift helps one student such as those in the 8,500 child-headed households that CWS is assisting in its Giving Hope program in Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

In the name of a workaholic colleague, give a $22 beehive to people like the indigenous farmers in Argentina's Gran Chaco who're making enough money selling honey to buy food and clothes for their families.

For those who want to dig a little deeper, a $30 gift will help drill a shallow borehole well for a rural community that doesn't have access to clean water.

Gardeners on your list will respond to a $50 gift of drip irrigation system piping-which helps people like Andrés Avlino Castro and his family in Guatemala succeed with more productive, sustainable agriculture techniques.

And then there's half share in a water buffalo for $100 (which half is up to you, says CWS) – the low-carbon-footprint pickup truck alternative that hauls produce to market and brings profits back home for struggling farm families worldwide.

Pay tribute to the entrepreneur on your list with a $100 micro-credit loan-that helps a women's group jumpstart a business enterprise.

Or, the $155 it costs to pay a lawyer's salary for a week is a unique gift that can make a difference for indigenous people like those in Latin America's Gran Chaco region now battling to regain legal title to their ancestral lands.

Church World Service suggests that community and faith groups organize church fairs or holiday markets to feature alternative gifts that put meaning into holiday gift giving for children and adults.

To help with the planning, CWS offers a free Alternative Holiday Market Packet, a resource for groups or congregations that want to promote an alternative to a consumer-oriented observance of the holidays. The packet contains tips on organizing an Alternative Holiday Market, a promotional poster, reproducible gift vignettes, and a copy of the Best Gift Catalog.

Best Gift catalogs and Alternative Holiday Market packets can be ordered at (800) 297-1516 or viewed online at http://www.cwsbestgifts.org/. Gifts may be ordered by mail, telephone or online.

At work in 80 countries worldwide, Church World Service is a relief, sustainable development and refugee assistance agency supported by public donations, grants and by 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations in the United States.

Church World Service