stories:
The Ten
10 Food-Related Charities
Gifts that benefit good causes
By Roxanne Webber
1. Save the Seeds. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is an international organization dedicated to preserving the world’s food security. Donations go to the long-term maintenance of seed banks (including the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a.k.a. the Doomsday Vault) and grants for gathering accurate information on existing seed collections.
2. Give a Pig. Mercy Kits from Mercy Corps make charitable giving a little more personal. These donation packages let you give a pig, a goat, a beehive, or farming supplies to those in need worldwide. The organization has worked with people in 106 nations and contributed $1.5 billion in assistance since 1979. Heifer International offers a similar program.
3. Support Pediatric Cancer Research. Order some holiday cookies from Cookies for Kids’ Cancer and 75 percent of the purchase price will go directly toward funding for pediatric cancer research. Try the Box of Hope, which contains a dozen each of chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and lemon sugar cookies.
4. Teach a Kid to Plant. The National Gardening Association’s Adopt a School Garden Program helps schools plan, build, and maintain a garden, as well as create a curriculum around it. Larger donations can be directed toward the school of your choice, while moderate donations are used to promote the program and develop educational tools for teachers.
5. Save Family Farms. Farm Aid’s Family Farm Disaster Fund helps farmers recover from weather-related disasters. The organization provides emergency funding, support hotlines, and legal and financial counseling to help farmers avoid foreclosure and stay on their land after a natural disaster. Currently, it is assisting farmers in the Midwest who were affected by the flooding that occurred earlier this year.
6. Keep the Rain Forest Lush. Sustainable Harvest International, an 11-year-old nonprofit organization, teaches Central American farmers sustainable ways to work their land without harming rain forests. Donations can be made toward everything from providing a community grain silo to funding village school programs that plant vegetables and trees.
7. Help End Hunger. Freedom from Hunger provides women with microcredit loans and health education. Its Credit with Education program helps impoverished women purchase higher-quality food and have more control over their families’ health.
8. Feed the Elderly. The Meals on Wheels Association of America (MOWAA) delivers nutritious food to elderly, homebound, and disabled people. Donate directly to MOWAA, or use its directory to find a local chapter.
9. Help the Homeless. All of the proceeds from sales of the HELP Comfort Foods line of chocolates (we like the salty turtles) go directly to HELP USA, which aims to assist homeless people in becoming self-sufficient. It does this by providing housing, job training and placement, childcare, and other services to those in need.
10. Know Your Fish. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has spearheaded ocean conservation measures for the past 23 years with innovative projects like Seafood Watch. It offers pocket and cell phone guides to choosing sustainable seafood, and advises purveyors on environmentally responsible seafood to carry.
I also love heifer.org, the organization that works on ending hunger & promoting sustainability. You can give an animal -- sheep, llama, goat -- to a family for their livelihood. Here in SF, La Cocina (lacocinasf.org) helps low-income food entrepreneurs by providing a commercial kitchen, training and advice.
Remember, under the Share Our Strength banner are five programs: Taste of the Nation; Great American Bake Sale; Great American DineOut; A Tasteful Pursuit and Operation Frontline each focusing on a childhood hunger and nutritional education.
Another wonderful organization is Common Threads http://www.commonthreads.org/index.html. They work with children from lower income areas to teach them about food, cooking, and how to share what they learn with their families in the aim of bringing families together around the dinner table.
For those who live in Chicago, a great gift idea I ran across is a deck of cards, where each card is actually a $10 off coupon for a wide range of great restaurants. The cards are called "a la card" and $1 from each purchase of the cards go to Common Threads http://alacardchicago.com/.
This is a great list, and Heifer and Common Threads are excellent, too. For domestic and international hunger-related advocacy, check out Bread for the World (http://www.bread.org/). They were at the forefront of the movement to reform the Farm Bill and are now lobbying for legislation to ease the impact of the global food crisis at home and abroad.
Many of these organizations are in some way faith-based (ecumenical or interfaith): my favorite church-based charity is the Lutheran (ELCA) World Hunger Appeal, which has incredibly low operating costs, strong partnerships with local groups and sustainable projects, and (bonus!) really nice e-cards and printable donation cards for special occasions and the holidays. Here's a link for more information about them: http://www.elca.org/Our-Faith-In-Acti...
Any local food kitchen is a good way to give back and help in the community. They always need volunteers especially around the holidays.
A great organization in Denver, CO, is Project Angel Heart:
http://www.projectangelheart.org
Their annual Dining Out for Life fund-raiser which local-area restaurants participate in is on April 30th in 2009. So if you're traveling to Denver then, watch their website for a list of participating restaurants who give a portion of the full day's proceeds to Project Angel Heart.