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.