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It seems impossible but Christmas and the New Year are on their way fast. This means buying presents and getting ready for 2009. So why not incorporate these activities with helping animals?
Diaries and calendars
Great gifts or stocking fillers, these come in all shapes & sizes and for all kinds of animals. Buy for yourself! They also make wonderful PR when you bring them out in front of friends or visitors to your home or office see your calendar on the wall. IT may have its place - e.g. the palm pilot, - but it can be very slow too. Use your diaries and calendars to put events that the charity is organising in them - or checkour calendarfor info!
Clothing
You can buy some great t-shirts and sweaters for animal charities, which gives another opportunity to do some PR for your favourite animal. T-shirts, fleeces, sweatshirts galore, plus also on the material side, t-towels and even in some cases duvet covers and pillow cases. Buy a t-shirt or sweatshirt and wear them when you are out and about e.g. at events, or shopping, to give the charity extra PR!
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Gifts to help with animals' care
Many animal charities are becoming more creative in the gifts they are coming up with; the Dogs' Trust for instance has gifts to give one of the dogs in their care a gift - a dental, a bed, a kennel, a health check, training and more. The Brooke enable you to buy examples such as a day's training for locals by animal welfare trainers. |
Resources
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Shop on-line
Many animal charities are listed with Give or Take The site is a shopping portal - you earn cashback on your purchases and can give it to one of the site's charity partners. Or you can take it for yourself! The site has over 700 stores you can shop with so why not do your Christmas shopping through it and give some of your cashback to your favourite aniamal charity?
Adopting/sponsoring
Many chariites offer animals up for adoption (i.e. you adopt, the animal stays where it is); the recipient normally receives a collection of items e.g. a certificate, newsletter, may be a t-shirt. These vary from charity to charity, animal to animal. Many costs run around £24.95 a year.
Membership
One year's membership to a charity can buy the recipient updates, news, and the knowledge that their gift is supporting their chosen charity's work. What you get varies from charity to charity, but we just got membership of one organisation for £30 for the year and the recipient has barely taken his nose out of the Welcome Pack since it arrived.
Give an animal a home
Buy an acre of rainforest! This will give many animals home protection i.e. it will ensure that the animals living in your acre have a home to live in! There are a number of charities which enable you to buy an acre - or more. One of the biggest problems animals such as the orangutan face is the disappearance of their homes, due to human action such as logging.
Make a pledge
Vow to give some REGULAR time to animals and the environment and to really make a big difference in 2009. One of the largest problems animal charities face is a lack of volunteers who will reliably turn up regularly to lend a paw. The more of us who get involved and help, the better for everyone concerned.
Vow to change in 2009
It takes 21 days to change a habit, so pick one thing you are doing which harm the environment and see what you can do to turn them into positive actions in 2009. These could be the most powerful present of all! (When you've kicked the habit, why not choose another one to knock on the head?)
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