Give a Woman Some Bees and.....

The Buzz About Bees - From India to the Dominican Republic, bees from Heifer International help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen.

Beehives require almost no space, and once established, are inexpensive to maintain. As bees search for nectar, they pollinate plants. Placed strategically, beehives can as much as double some fruit and vegetable yields. In this way, a beehive can be a boon to a whole village.

Although most Heifer partners keep bees as a supplement to family income, beekeeping can be a family's livelihood. Your gift provides a family with a package of bees, the box and hive, and training in beekeeping. Give Honey Bees - $30.00 (Heifer Project Catalog)

Piggy-backing on Tankwoman's post, Two Days Without War or... , I want to offer another suggestion for gift-giving to help the many all over the planet who don't need digital video cameras, seductive perfumes, coffee-makers that also make waffles for you and kiss you good morning, or any of the trillion other things being advertised as good gift ideas this commercial season. (Which, by the way, is what it mainly seems to be. A celebration of the god Mammon, where the retail sales index is far more important than anything else.) Those many are the folks in Indonesia, Haiti, Appalachia, Mozambique, Liberia, The Caucasus, Pakistan, Guatemala, Brazil, on and on ad infinitum, who need a nutricious meal for their children, milk for their babies, food for the elderly and sick, a tiny seed of hope that their family will survive.

My suggestion is the Heifer Project, by my lights one of the best charities around. How can you not love an organization whose motto is: "Ending Hunger....Taking Care of the Earth." Heifer works on the old adage: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he'll be able to feed his family from then on." Through your donation to Heifer you can choose to give families or groups livestock both large and small, which will change their lives, the lives of entire villages, in miraculous ways. These animals enable people to make their own decisions about their lives, to share their fortune with others, to set up small business collectives, to use resources that would otherwise be wasted. Going to the home page of the site will set you off on a journey of exploration on which you can visit ongoing projects, successes already experienced, opportunities for further assistance and education.

But, if you don't have time for browsing the whole site, at least visit the online Catalog, see what you can give for what amount to very small sums. Yes, a whole heifer is expensive, but you can give a portion - a share of a heifer is only $50.00. You can give gifts from this catalog in the names of those for whom you would normally buy expensive toys or boxes of chocolate. You pay for it, send them a card letting them know what you have given them: the gift of generosity and thoughtfulness for others. You might be amazed at how proud and happy a child can be to know that he or she has helped other children with a gift of rabbits, or baby chicks, a goat - even better, a pregnant goat! The brother-in-law who always expects expensive scotch might not be as thrilled to know his gift of a pig ($120.00) helped a family in the Dominican Republic to improve their lives, but it will make him a better person eventually, just wait and see.

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