Yet when the last carol is sung, dreidel is spun, and party is done, the presents that just days earlier were the cause for celebration have lost their luster and are relegated to toy chests and closets. The lasting impact of the holidays is felt in the tons of trash dumped into landfills. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, households increase waste production by 25 percent. Altogether that adds an extra one million tons of garbage—food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons—each week.
There are alternatives that really can make a difference—not only toward reducing waste but by supporting organizations that address social and environmental issues from your backyard to oceans away. Consider the old holiday adage: ’Tis better to give than receive. Then give friends and family gifts they’ll never receive. Most charitable and nonprofit organizations accept donations in honor of a friend or relative and some even send personalized greeting cards detailing the contribution. It’s a stocking stuffer that doubles as a tax deduction for you. Face it, you didn’t want to wrap all those presents anyway.
Build a Community
The holidays are not only a time to embrace family but also your entire community. One way to ensure the future of a thriving community is to support the organizations that keep children safe and active, help families find shelter, and lend a hand to the residents in need. In honor of those loved ones who care the most, give to a local organization that makes your hometown a home.
Almost every county has a United Way chapter that caters specifically to the needs of that region, funding programs tailor-made to its community. Staff members and volunteers interview human service professionals from the education, criminal justice, and medical sectors to assess the community’s needs. The United Way of Ulster County, for instance, has identified affordable daycare, low-income housing, and family centered mental health as some of the target areas in the county. Like investing in the mutual fund of charities, donors can be assured that their money is serving the best interests of the community and supporting an array of programs, yielding highest philanthropic dividends. “We try to jump in when there are broad issues,” said Stacey Rein, president of the United Way of Ulster County, on her way to a meeting where she chairs a substance abuse prevention board the county started. “When we had flooding a few years ago we facilitated a task force to respond to that. We try to fill the leadership role when there is a variety of issues at stake and a variety of players because we know the business and human services communities so well.”
Habitat for Humanity aims at giving a hand up not a handout to low-income families through homeownership opportunities. The Capital District affiliate of Habitat for Humanity has built 40 homes in its almost 20 years operating in Albany. The organization has set an ambitious goal of building another 40 homes over the next five years, many in the Southern Saratoga area. “If folks have any concern at all for the plight of the working poor and substandard housing and the opportunity Habitat provides for homeownership, then they should consider Habitat for Humanity,” said Steve Haggerty, executive director of the Capital District Habitat for Humanity. As little as $10 provides some bricks for construction and a Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa card for your recipient. Twenty-five dollars amounts to six bags of cement for a house that will cost $75,000 to build. Haggerty suggests writing checks out to the specific chapter of Habitat in the community you directly want to support.
Protect Local Resources
This holiday reduce the amount of waste consumer products create by pledging not to purchase as many unnecessary presents. Instead support local environmental organizations in the name of the people you would have purchased scarves, ties, and perfume for. There are plenty of land, water, and critter-friendly groups that need extra help to keep New York green even in the winter.
Everyone has at least one neighbor they’d never mention nuclear power to when running late. This holiday season encourage that environmental passion by funding a Riverkeeper project. The organization works to protect the Hudson River, its tributaries, and runs campaigns to protect the New York City watershed and close Indian Point. You can donate to the general operations of Riverkeeper or directly to a campaign your neighbor has built his or her soapbox on. It will mean more than the gloves you would’ve bought—they’d probably get lost at the next protest anyway.
A family membership to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater makes a perfect group gift. Clearwater works as an education and advocacy group for the Hudson River. The organization brings groups of all ages on the replica 18th-century Dutch cargo ship for three-hour sails, educating passengers on ecology, sailing, and navigation. For landlubbers, the Tideline Discovery Program brings students to an onshore facility where they can comb the beach, study the organisms in a drop of water, and still discover the mysteries of Muhheakantuck, the river that flows both ways. Clearwater’s environmental action team advocates for the river through legal action. For $55 you can purchase a family membership that is a gift to the whole valley. Your relatives will receive a quarterly newsletter and can even partake in any of the member sails leaving piers from New York City to Albany.
Development is an increasing concern in New York and open space is harder to find each year. Land conservancy projects help maintain the natural landscape that makes our region unique. Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy (MHLC) serves Montgomery, Albany, and Schenectady counties. MHLC executive director Jill Knapp believes open spaces do make a difference in the community. “Many of our properties, although not all of them, do have public access so that people can go out and enjoy the land,” said Knapp. “Some of our other ones that don’t have public access are still providing a public benefit by either helping to protect a habitat or helping to protect water quality or protecting a beautiful scenery someone can enjoy.” Last year, the MHLC acquired a 138-acre parcel of land in Knox with several waterfalls, two streams, wetlands, and a complex trail system. The MHLC has smaller wooded areas in Delmar where local residents can walk through enjoying the birds, deer, and wild flowers.
Winter is especially hard on the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Heating and cleaning the barn, feeding the animals more food, and providing medicine are expensive but necessary. Formerly abused goats are sore with severe arthritis needing medicine to walk and the steers eat twice as much hay as the rest of the year. The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary provides a home for animals seized from abusive and neglectful farm owners and rescued from the streets by humane law. They become ambassadors for animals still used for production. “We educate visitors about factory farms, which are the big, mean, nasty farms that have thousands of animals living in a warehouse,” said Robin Henderson, an animal caregiver for almost two years. Donors can sponsor an animal, for a year and receive a personalized card with the picture and story of the animal for a monthly fee of $10 for a hen like Cora to $50 for a steer like Elvis. “The only difference between our animals and the animals at factory farms is our animals got lucky and found their way here,” said Henderson.
Think Globally
During the holiday season it’s easy to get caught up in your own world but slow down, stop, and think about people living on the other side of the world. There are people living as close as the Caribbean with nothing to cook on and women as far away as Tibet lacking sterile instruments to cut the umbilical cord of their newborns. Worthy organizations make a difference around the globe.
One HEART utilizes three programs to improve the health of pregnant women and reduce maternal and infant mortality rates. The most popular, Skilled Birth Attendant Training, is a three-month course that teaches villagers, township and county doctors, and other health workers to deliver healthy babies. Graduates get a medical bag with supplies and even a bicycle to get from village to village. “We’re not going into Tibet to do a skill and just leave,” said Claire Osborn of One HEART. “We actually want to train the locals so they can then pass along those skills to future generations.” Pregnancy and Village Outreach in Tibet (PAVOT) recruits the female village leaders to provide pregnant women with accurate health information, like nutrition during pregnancy and the importance of prenatal vitamins. The last is a physician-training program where Western doctors educate Tibetan doctors on emergency obstetric procedures. A $50 donation will deliver a birth kit to an expecting mother and a card inside a handmade Tibetan cloth envelope to your honoree. A birth kit saves lives with its simple contents: sterile blanket, sterile string to tie off the umbilical cord, a resuscitation mask, prenatal vitamins, surgical gloves, sterile cloths to clean and dry the baby, baby blanket and hat, and a bar of soap.
One website is one-stop shopping for saving the world. Alternative Gifts International, www.altgifts.org, promotes 34 worldwide projects to support in honor of your loved ones. A fuel-efficient rocket stove can be purchased for a family in Haiti for $11. For the same price, you can feed a child living in the Gaza Strip milk and a school snack for a month. Ten dollars treats five clinic patients in Darfur. With so many important projects and 17 greeting cards to choose from, you should find everything you need to bring holiday joy to someone you love and someone you may never meet. If you just can’t decide between providing healthcare for Lepers in China or shelter for refugees in Lebanon, donate to the Where Most Needed category.
Once you have decided on a nonprofit to donate to, before you sign the check, look them up on www.guidestar.org to verify their legitimacy. For a complete contact list of the organizations and charities mentioned in this article, visit www.chronogram.com.
