My Christmas Wish

Friends and Family,
With your help, I am hereby asking an enormous favor, and one that means a lot to me:

I am asking your help to ensure that I do not receive a single Christmas gift this year.

Have I gone mad? No. :) With the world economy spiraling us down into darker times than we would like, spending has been cut across the board in almost all categories. People are foregoing many items, food, and other commodities that they have become accustomed to, and these sacrifices are making news everywhere. But the one sacrifice that we haven't heard much about is sacrifice itself.

When times get tough, it becomes much more difficult to give money away--strictly because one's thoughts and concerns have to turn inward, to our families and loved ones. This is absolutely understandable--it's just another sad casualty of a recession like this one. I myself don't have the donations that I would like to be able to make.

But after some thought, I realized that there is one area where I can still give meaningfully: Christmas. It occurred to me that what I want more than anything this year is to help others in a way that really celebrates the true meaning of Christmas, as well as gives me the most happiness (thus being a little selfish, after all).

So, in other words, I am asking for your help in forgoing all of the Christmas presents that I might otherwise receive this year.

I am most definitely not asking for you to give in any way you are not comfortable with, and if you would like to simply abstain for any donations, then I completely understand and support that. But if you truly would like to give me a gift this Christmas season, then I ask instead that you give it to Heifer International.

This organization is simply amazing in its ability not just to provide food to those in hunger, but to provide sustainable means of nutrition in the future. Thus donations go directly to provide animals (through various means) to families in dire need, and those families use these animals to build for the immediate future. An astonishing illustration of this showed up in the New York Times in January, in which a young girl from Uganda actually built her entire education (including coming to the U.S. for college) all upon a single donation of a goat made through Heifer International. This story is linked here:

How a Goat Led a Girl Up the Path to Education - New York Times

Probably the thing I love most about this is that Heifer sets direct guidelines about how these gifts are handled, and does everything it can to ensure that the gifts continue to keep on giving (this is also noted in the article). So one chicken becomes four, then ten, and so on. This leads to a miraculous turnaround in some cases with only a small effort.

I won't go on much more here, but you may also visit Heifer International to find out more information.

My sincere and heartfelt thanks for your understanding in this, and most of all for supporting my one profound wish this holiday season.

- Andy