Christmas is on its way - as it has been since late September, if the commercial agitprop is to be believed - and so the time has come to make some decisions about what to put under the tree this time around. For weeks now the crappy catalogues have been choking our letterbox with the vigour of an algal bloom. One arrived in my hands today, though, that I have been looking forward to for some time: Arguably The World's Most Useful Gift Catalogue.
I defy you to find any other advertising this year that offers for purchase a goat, literacy or an orchard. Arguably The World's Most Useful Gift Catalogue is no run-of-the-mill parade of inane consumption - quite the opposite, in fact. The twist in this list is that the gifts are not for your loved ones as such, but for some of the poorest people around. Each item, such as a year’s worth of school supplies for a child has a fixed price; once you make the purchase you receive a stylish greeting card containing a description of the gift, which you can then give to the friend on whose behalf you’ve bought it. Better than a pair of socks, in my book.
And you don’t need to spend a fortune to feel the warm inner glow! A basic set of cooking utensils for a displaced family in Uganda will set you back a mere $7 – the amount I spent on a coffee and snack this afternoon. A paltry $15 will give a family in Bangladesh a well deep enough to draw water from below the level at which the arsenic sits in their local water table. Imagine - clean, safe water forever for the price of a pizza! And as someone who spent the best part of a year shivering through the clammy psychedelic misery of mosquito-borne Ross River Fever, I assure you that $10 for a mosquito net for a family in Burma is very good value indeed. Last year I even managed to brow-beat my colleagues into using the money we raised selling chocolate to ourselves in the office – a scheme I instigated then instantly regretted – to purchase health care training for an entire village. (It almost made the bitchy recriminations over the shortfall in the till worthwhile.) Most of the gifts are associated with an education programme, too - it’s not simply a handout, but a chance for people to improve their own lives, and in turn move their local communities forward.
It’s got everything, don’t you think? Low prices, great gifts and an effortless opportunity to take part in making the world a better place… and as a bonus you get to avoid the Christmas carols and fractious crowds altogether this year.
2 comments:
Yes, I was going to put in a line about the smug satisfaction to be gained, but it kind of fell by the wayside. Perhaps I missed the most compelling point.
Actually, you were there last year when The Great Chocolate Incident was finally laid to rest... do you remember precisely what it was we bought? Some HIV-related thing out of this catalogue, but it's not there this year, so it's slipped my mind.
Wow. That's pretty cool. There's nothing I'm aware of like this in Canada. My Canadian progressive-holier-than-thou-false-consciousness just took a hit. I think some people I know would probably be pretty offended if they didn't get some shiny piece of crap for themselves along with the donation, (miserable wastes of skin that they are)...
Ho ho ho! MERRRRY CHRISTMAS!
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