In our “This Week in Social Entrepreneurship” series, each Friday we will feature the top stories in Social Entrepreneurship for the week that we find to be noteworthy, novel, and thought-provoking. What are your favorite stories this week in Social Entrepreneurship? Let’s start a discussion!
- Have you been looking for a comprehensive guide to all the essential resources and tools to meet your social change needs?
The first of December. By now people are well underway with planning and buying Christmas presents. But this year, why not consider buying a gift that will help someone else. Those Chris Kringles that you don’t know what to get, or those people that are difficult to buy for… easy solved! Here are a couple of ways you can give generously this Christmas:
1. Instead of wasting money on pointless gifts that will either be regifted, thrown out, or used once and then left to collect dust, think about how you could instead spend that $30 on providing a vaccination for a child, or $40 on a goat for a community that can provide milk and income through breeding and selling. There are so many different organisations and groups that provide this outlet, simply type in ‘donation gifts’ or anything similar into google and you can be linked to UNICEF, Compassion, and countless smaller groups.
2. Buy fair trade products. By buying fair trade you are supporting communities that really need the money. From coffee and chocolate, to soaps and beauty products, to clothes, bags and ornaments. There are so many ways you can buy a fair trade gift. Oxfam shops are easily accessible with some great home decor! http://www.oxfamshop.org.au/homedecor
3. Buy a gift that will help the recipient personally. Maybe even hand make it. A lot of our friends may be struggling at this time of year so why not give them something that can help lift their spirits?
This website puts into perspective how fortunate we are to have the lives we have. For example, I, still at uni with casual work am still in the top 13.96% richest in the world. Try it out, see where you fit into the scale.
Offering help in a way that meets community needs can be so vital to the success of a program. Without knowing what the community needs, how can useful help be implemented?
The gap in inequality is steadily increasing, without the recognition by everyone for sustainable development, it will only increase further. This blog has been created so that people can become aware of ways that they can become active members in development. We are so consumed in our lives that it makes it diffucult to comprehend that right now, as you read this, people are dying, being sold into prostitution and struggling to find ways to feed their families. I just want to allow people to become more aware to what is happening in this world, because it is so easy to avoid topics that are so distant to us, but they are so important. Such easy steps can be taken such as sponsoring a child, buying a goat for a gift to someone, donating to organisations, to even becoming advocates for organisations and travelling overseas on aid programs.
This blog will post information on organisations, interviews with people involved in development, it will provide information on how you can help, it will post videos, quotes and photographs on anything to do with inequality and how we can help reduce this gap.
I also encourage people to post here as well with anything that you may find relevant to this cause.
Thank-you.
