A Goat Makes a Great Christmas Gift

In the midst of all your shopping and Googling for free shipping coupon codes, the holiday season is a great time to take a step back and reflect on what’s really worth anything.  That’s important because it’s easy to lose perspective on just how great we have it (especially if you’re making a good living online with no boss to answer to and no rules to follow).

Here are a few examples:

• Just $15,000/year would give you more purchasing power than the average person in all but 39 countries.
• Almost a billion people don’t even have access to safe drinking water.
• A child dies from hunger every 5 seconds.

Raw stats don’t tell the story like seeing the actual people behind them though:

Give Back

About 10 years ago, my wife and I stopped giving each other gifts for Christmas.  Instead, we took the money we would have spent and used it to make some sort of impact in the world.  Just $200, for example, will cure someone of leprosy.  (Did you even know that people still suffer from leprosy when a cure is readily available?  We didn’t.)

One of our favorite places we turn is the World Vision Gift Catalog.  Their most popular gift is a goat:

Goats nourish hungry children and families with healthy milk, cheese, and yogurt. Goats also give a much-needed income boost by providing offspring and extra dairy products for sale at the market.

A healthy dairy goat can give up to 16 cups of milk a day. Goat milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk and is an excellent source of calcium, protein, and other essential nutrients that growing children need. Goats are practical animals — flourishing in harsh climates while producing valuable manure to fertilize crops and vegetable gardens.

Just flipping through the catalog is a very effective way of reestablishing some perspective.

There is obviously no shortage of charities to help out this season, but there are also businesses like KindCoupons.org (owned by a friend of mine) that let you do good while doing things you’d normally be doing anyway (in this case, shopping with coupons).

Keep an eye out for opportunities like that and consider setting aside some portion of the money you would have spent on yourself and others and using it to make a meaningful impact in the world.

What are some ways you give back?