Gifts for the Needy That Keep on Living--and Giving : Unusual Presents, Often Critical for Survival, Can Be Sent to Poor Areas Around the World
You say Uncle Charlie has all the ties he needs? Well, how about a pig this Christmas? Or a colony of bees? Or six immunization shots?
He, of course, doesn’t get the gift. What he does get is a holiday card saying that the particular present has been sent in his honor to some needy person somewhere in the world. The card recipient will have the satisfaction of knowing that someone has spent anywhere from 50 cents to $900 for a gift that keeps giving.
It all happens courtesy of a Pasadena organization known as Alternative Christmas Markets, now in its seventh holiday season of coaxing money that might otherwise go toward something possibly unnecessary into the purchase of a practical item for someone whose survival might depend on it.
For weeks now, and continuing through most of December, more than 80 local churches have and will, usually on separate weekends, set up booths on behalf of four charitable organizations, each booth generally sponsored by various age groups within the congregations. The purpose: Sell gifts that probably nobody you know would want.
“Think Pig!” said the sign over the table at which Michele and Jeff Hilland of Pasadena held forth recently.
The wife and husband were in the patio of Pasadena Presbyterian Church, along with volunteers at about a dozen other tables, all of them trying to sign up scrutinizing shoppers--for gifts none of them would ever see.
Bees and rabbits were being promoted at one table, treadle-type sewing machines at another, biscuits at still another.
“Did you know that one sow can be responsible for 4,000 pork dinners a year?” Jeff Hilland asked.
He knew this because he was there in the interest of Heifer Project International, a Little Rock-headquartered organization that distributes to the impoverished of the world not only heifers, but pigs, goats, sheep, poultry, rabbits, you name it.
“One sow can produce as much as two tons of meat every year,” read a flyer at Hilland’s table. “Twice a year she gives birth to a litter of 8 to 10 curly-tailed little pigs. If all 20 are well cared for and fattened to 200 pounds each, that’s two tons of meat.”
At the calligraphy table, Edith and Everett Hulsebus of La Verne, having spent $50 for two colonies of bees and $20 for two flocks of chickens, were having pre-printed cards further inscribed by hand.
One, for instance, wished the recipient a joyous Christmas, and added that “one colony of bees” was being sent in his honor from “Everett and Edie.”
The penmanship was courtesy of John Blount of Highland Park, one of seven experts flourishing pens with special nibs permitting both broad and slender strokes.
Lack of Electricity
On display in the courtyard was one of those treadle-type sewing machines, the kind your grandmother used to sew on. For $300, the New York-headquartered Church World Service will send a new one to a Third World country where the lack of electricity makes this style imperative.
“Singer still makes them specifically with this in mind,” explained alternative markets volunteer Helen Hodgman of Altadena.
For big-ticket items such as these, shares may be purchased. A sewing machine share went for $10, a heifer share for $20.
This year the market has added the Americus, Ga.-based Habitat for Humanity, whose shopping list was mostly building materials, and the Monrovia-based World Vision, whose varied list included health care such as eyeglasses and oral rehydration therapy.
OK, all of this is a clever idea, but what does it mean to someone on the receiving end?
“Besides food and income, there are benefits that no one could possibly imagine in advance,” Terry Henderson said by phone from Arizona.
He was vacationing briefly from his chores as director of the Heifer Project in Mexico.
“In one village there was a 10-year-old son with a cleft palate,” the United Methodist Church missionary said. “The only reason an operation came about was because the doctors donated their services for the surgery, and the family was able to pay part of the hospital bill by selling some of the pigs they owned after receiving one from us.”
Henderson said Heifer began in Mexico with pigs nine years ago, and since then has distributed more than 1,500 of them.
Bought in Mexico
“We buy in Mexico, but at prices way beyond what a peasant farmer could afford. We give sows to 10 different families in a village, plus one boar for the entire community. “All that we ask in return is that two females from the first litter of each be given to us, and we in turn distribute these to still another village.
“The individual families usually sell a couple pigs out of each litter to buy feed for the rest, and for income for other necessities. When the animals are slaughtered for food, it is usually shared with neighbors, since there often is no refrigeration making storage possible.”
This and much more comes to pass because, to a growing extent, at Christmas each year now, the meaning of giving takes on its original definition.
“The market idea began in 1980,” Harriet C. Prichard of Sierra Madre recalled. “I was director of children’s ministries at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to establish a model so that the children especially would realize the real meaning of what gift-giving is all about--that Christmas isn’t secular materialism.”
On the two days of a weekend before Yule that first year, booths were set up on the church patio, a few goats were on hand, and $8,000 was raised.
The idea wasn’t long in taking root, so much so that last year, 45 alternative markets in Southern California--also in fellowship halls and on the patios of other churches--brought in more than $292,000.
That brought the total for the six Christmases to $630,000.
“This year we have 82 such markets in operation, and we think we can raise $500,000,” Prichard said.
Although the booths eventually come down, orders for gifts are taken by the churches until the Sunday before Christmas, to accommodate those who couldn’t make it earlier.
Four Groups Involved
The markets raise the money, the four organizations see to the providing of the gifts.
The shopping lists are anything but typical of what you would take into your local department store:
Last year, through the Alternative Christmas Markets, Heifer sent to poor people--both in the Third World and in the United States--41,000 chickens, 635 rabbits, 424 colonies of bees, 103 pigs, 153 goats, 111 sheep and 23 heifers.
Just about everything except a partridge in a pear tree.
At the same time, as a result of the donations, Church World Service was able to send 48,484 tree seedlings, 16,143 vaccine shots, 30,184 biscuits, 757 pounds of vegetable and fruit seeds, 1,900 blankets, 49 village water pumps, and 21 treadle sewing machines.
The shopping list for Habitat items includes (overseas) $5 for 10 bricks, $20 for a window, $50 to paint a house and (in the United States) $10 for 10 concrete blocks, $35 for the nails in a house, and $60 for a door.
World Vision’s List
World Vision’s list includes $5 for a shovel, $500 for a refrigeration unit, $1 for 10 doses of oral rehydration therapy, 50 cents for immunization shots for six diseases.
The Heifer list includes $900 for a heifer, $1 for a chicken, $25 for a colony of bees, $150 for a goat, $150 for a pig, $150 for a sheep.
The Church World Service list includes $1.50 for 10 high-energy biscuits, $5 for a blanket, $180 for a water buffalo, $300 for a treadle sewing machine, $280 for a water pump.
The four agencies carry out the purchasing and distribution once they have received the funds. Sometimes the gifts are bought overseas, sometimes in this country. Goats raised in La Verne, for instance, occasionally are sent to Mexico and Central America. Where the goods and animals go depends on recommendations of the agency people stationed throughout the world.
“Do you realize that if you arrange to send a colony of bees to a farmer in, say, Latin America, you will automatically double his annual income?” Prichard asked. “Each colony gives up to 150 pounds of honey per year, and the colony doubles every spring, and then again the next spring.
“If a water pump is going to a village in Africa, Church World Service will not only arrange the purchase, but will assist in its installation, and the entire village will have clean water on the premises. More than likely, before that, a woman would have to walk four to six hours a day to carry back 15 liters on her head--and it takes about 12 liters per person just to keep clean, for drinking and for cooking.”
Anyone wishing to give a Christmas gift via this unusual method, and unable to attend the sales at churches from Atascadero to San Diego, may participate by getting in touch with Alternative Christmas Markets at (818) 577-0341.
The feeling is three-dimensional, shared by the donor, the person in whose name the gift is given, and by a third person neither will probably ever meet--the recipient.
