Help A Third World Entrepreneur This Christmas

I was sitting at the table yesterday after dinner with our extended family.

It was time to go through an annual ritual… put what you want for Christmas on a piece of paper and someone else will draw your name and get you what you wrote up to a limit of $30.

But I couldn’t think of what I wanted.

I really have more stuff than I have room to store it all! Don’t you?

Then it hit me… I remembered hearing something on the radio about how to give a Christmas gift to some of the poorest people on earth. (Note: If you’re freaked out by giving through religious organizations you’ll have to find another giving channel.)

So I wrote on the note to use the money to give a gift in my name and let me know what they gave to some desperately poor family.

Here were some of the options:

For $10 you can give a pair of chickens that produce enough eggs to feed a family and allow some to be sold for cash. They produce 200 to 300 eggs per year.

For $25 you can help build a water filter that lets a village have clean water to drink. Impure drinking water is one of the most common problems facing Third World entrepreneurs. Using concrete and sand, these bio water filters remove impurities, providing water for drinking and cooking that is 98 percent pure.

For $80 you can give a non electric sewing machine that allows a mother who might otherwise have no employment to sew for a living. The one shown here is probably very much like the machines used by our grand mothers —operated by a foot treadle. These are still in use in Asia and it allows them to earn an income even in places where there is no reliable electricity source.

For $110 you can give a pair of goats who will help start a herd and provide milk to drink and sell.

For $430 you can give someone a water buffalo, but that was out of my price range. A Water Buffalo is transportation, farm labor, and milk producer in one package!

I look forward to what that $30 that otherwise would go to waste on more “junk” for my closet will do to help someone else this Christmas!

Here’s the link again in case you want to do this too!