Ethical Gifts

In general, if I am going to be buying people gifts come the Festering Season, I’d rather get them something they actually want. Yes, it means it’s not such a surprise, but personally I don’t see the point of buying something that the recipient will find to be utterly useless.

For that, wishlists are bloody great – they keep the surprise, but at least you can list a number of things that you actually want, rather than “Oh, just buy me anything. You know me, you’ll find something“.

Anyway, for those times where people don’t have a wishlist, and do stick to the “Buy me any old thing” ethos, I now tend to buy an ethical gift (Water supply, chickens, etc. to some remote third-world area) rather than buying something useless. And so I thought I’d bung up a quick list of places with ideas I think are great…

1. World Vision‘s “Must Have Gifts” for projects around the world.
2. Sponsor A Tree do a number of Trees for Individuals in packs of 5,10, 20 or 30 trees
3. Slightly more expensive is WaterAid’s shop where you can buy water supplies etc. for projects around the world
4. In the UK, Garden Organic have the ability to Adopt a Vegetable, where £20 pays for the seed handling, propagation and storage in the Heritage Seed Library. There’s a list of the veg varieties available here.
5. Still in the UK, you can also support the Cats Protection League or sponsor a dog through Dogs Trust (something Herself does already)

I’m sure there are plenty of others, but these are the ones I tend to support/use. If you know of any other good ones, add them to the comments!