Holiday Gift Ideas
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If you find yourself in the giving mood and stuck for an idea this holiday season, we offer a few gift ideas from our online shop and some charitable donation ideas from organizations we’ve recently discovered.
Uncornered Market Photo Gifts and Shopping with Amazon
Our online shop at Cafepress offers calendars and note cards featuring our photography. We’ve also set up another online shop at Zazzle.com. In addition to titles on each calendar page, the most popular calendars (Children of the World, Food Markets of the World, People of the World) have been updated with photos from China, India, Nepal and Burma.
Note: Due to time constraints, we expect to shut down our online shop in January 2009, so stock up now if you see something you like. If you see an image in our photo gallery that you’d like on a note card or postcard, just drop us a line and send us the link to the image.
Help by Shopping with Amazon
If you shop with Amazon.com, please begin your shopping from our website. Click on the Amazon image on the left-hand side of our website or just follow this link before placing items in your shopping cart.
We get a percentage of the sale as commission, while the price of whatever you purchase remains the same to you. It’s not every day that you get a win-win situation like this.
Charitable Organizations
Please consider donating to one of the following:
Adrianne and Rick: We look to them and their work for inspiration. For background, you can read about them here and here. They plan to return to Cambodia and Burma in January 2009 to continue their grassroots development work. This time around, their goals include building a school for Burmese refugees on the Thai border, as well as working with orphanages, children’s hospitals, and fair trade organizations in Cambodia. All the money they receive in donations goes directly to development projects where they actively involve local people and organizations. They sell local crafts back home to fund their personal transport and living expenses.
You can contribute by check (US dollars are OK) to: K.I.D.S (Kids International Development Society) at 545 Vancouver Ave. Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada, V9S 4G6. You can also contact them at adrianneandrick [at] hotmail [dot] com.
Adrianne and Rick expect to receive their non-profit tax number and develop their website next year.
Or buy one of our Children of the World calendars at Cafepress or Zazzle.com. 100% of the profit will go to Adrianne’s and Rick’s projects in Cambodia.
Every contributor will receive regular email newsletters outlining how their donations are being used, as well as hard copy newsletters with photos. Their newsletters are profoundly moving and inspiring. Adrianne and Rick show how much can be accomplished when resources are employed wisely and leveraged through the commitment of local people.
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Passports with Purpose: The brainchild of four travelbloggers in Seattle who put their web-savvy and networking skills together to support Heifer International this holiday season.
Through the help of travelbloggers around the world, they developed a hefty list of prizes from cooking lessons in New York City to weekends stays at B&Bs to solar powered chargers. Find the prize you are interested in on this page, note the prize code, then buy raffle tickets at $10 a pop through FirstGiving until December 29. Their goal is to raise $5,000 for Heifer International.
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Voces de Mompox (Columbia): We recently learned of this project in New York City while chatting with its founders – Francisco Collazo & Julie Schwietert Collazo. In Mampox, Columbia, they began working with 9th grade students to promote creativity through multimedia projects. They quickly realized that the needs of the town far outstripped their resources and consequently set up a structure to help build on their work after their departure. Take a look for yourself and see the work they’ve done with students and the projects they have in mind for the future.
You can donate money directly on the top right sidebar of their website Collazo Projects or send school supplies, clothes or other needed supplies. Contact Julie Schwietert for more details.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Thanks so much for promoting Voces de Mompox! The kids are incredible and just knowing people think about them means so much!
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:27 am
@Julie: Glad to promote Voces de Mompox any way we can! I’m excited to follow the project and the work of the kids this year!