After spotlighting Shaboom makeup products and One Mama handmade accessories, clothing, and footwear this past summer, it clicked that I needed to begin to share more information about giving back. The holiday season is just the perfect time to shed some light!
Freeset is a fair trade business offering employment to women trapped in Kolkata’s sex trade. The company aims to see the 10,000 sex workers in their neighborhood empowered with the choice of leaving a profession they never chose in the first place. The women make eco-friendly totes and t-shirts that can be ordered from a variety of countries, so get yours today!
Project Cuddle is the result of one woman’s crusade to help prevent infants from being abandoned. Project Cuddle has saved over 600 of babies across the country and into Canada from the fate of being abandoned, or worse. The company works with frightened girls and women and helps them find safe, legal options so that they never have to leave a baby at a dumpster, a church or dirty back alley.
It costs $75 per day to keep the 24 hour crisis hot line open and you can help keep the line open by taking part in the holiday auction! The Project Cuddle holiday auction includes everything from the opportunity to hang backstage with The Beach Boys to meeting John Stamos on Broadway. You’ll find something for everyone on your holiday list!
Blessings in a Backpack is designed to feed elementary school children whose families qualify for the federal free and reduced meal program, and may not have any or enough food on the weekends.
$80 feeds a child in the program for an entire school year. Following a donation, a school is chosen and a local grocer partners with the program to provide food for meals in the backpacks.
The backpacks include ready-to-eat food items such as fruit roll ups, juice boxes, instant noodles, peanut butter, mac & cheese, cereal, pop tarts, etc. Blessings in a Backpack does its best to make sure the food is kid-friendly (lightweight, healthy, non-perishable and easy-to-prepare).
You can give $80, adopt a school, or volunteer this holiday season!
4. SOS Children
SOS Children’s Villages is the world’s largest charity dedicated to orphaned and abandoned children. These children come to SOS Children’s Villages where they are integrated into a loving family environment. They are nurtured and supported by an SOS Mother and up to 15 other children in their SOS home who become their SOS brothers and sisters.
While growing up, SOS children have the benefit of a stable, loving family environment that includes the necessities of life such as clothing, meals, medical care and a high-quality education.
You can sponsor a child or village, make a small donation, or send a holiday card today.
Soles4Souls is a Nashville-based charity that collects shoes from the warehouses of footwear companies and the closets of people like you. The charity distributes these shoes to people in need, regardless of race, religion, class, or any other criteria. Since 2005, Soles4Souls has given away nearly 12 million pairs of new and gently worn shoes in over 125 countries,
There are so many ways that you can help give one of the simplest, but most important gifts to those in need; check them out here.
The Wheelchair Foundation is a nonprofit organization leading an international effort to create awareness of the needs and abilities of people with physical disabilities, to promote the joy of giving, create global friendship, and to deliver a wheelchair to every child, teen and adult in the world who needs one, but cannot afford one.
The company has delivered over 830,000 brand new manual wheelchairs to people in need in 150+ countries worldwide and plan to hit the 1 million mark very soon. You can help them get to the 1 million mark by donating this season!
7. Free Rice
FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme which provides free educational trivia that leads to free rice for the hungry.
For each answer you get right, 10 grains of rice is donated to the United Nations World Food Program. This is made possible by the generosity of the sponsors who advertise on this site. Millions have been fed since the website formed in October 2007 and you can be part of the change. You can give a child food on Christmas day.
Notable Mention: Birthday Wishes
What gifts will you be giving to the world this season?