Oxfam, Perfume and Red Pandas

Charitable Gifts are a bit weird aren't they? How do you give someone a gift, but not give them a gift? Also, it's almost like you are saying to the recipient - you are too much of a consumer and you think about yourself too much, so I am going to be charitable on your behalf. Almost as if you are doing your best to save their soul.



Having said that, I actually think charitable gifts are a good idea in principle. A couple of Christmases ago, I picked up a pamphlet in Oxfam all about charitable gifts, what you could buy, and were it went. I thought it was a great idea for presents for the family, neither mine or Alex's family really want for anything, and I do find the whole buying gifts for distant relations who you don't see from one end of the year to the other, very irritating, and a waste of money. Lets face it, you don't see these people above 10 hours out of a whole year, and haven't got a clue what they like, or have got, and then are expected to produce an amazing present for them, for as little money as possible, and to top it all they are doing the same for you. When you open the gift it's always some weird tat, that you wouldn't touch with a barge pole, and you wonder why you bothered spending all that time, money and deliberation on what you bought them. Any way, I digress.



I thought the charitable gift thing was a great idea, and when Alex came home, I rather enthusiastically explained the concept to him, and didn't he think it was a really good idea? He laughed in my face. After he got up off the floor from a mirth overdose, I asked him, rather irritatedly, what he found so funny? 'Can you see my mum's face when she opens that?' He said, 'she'd be really unimpressed.' I have to admit, that after thinking about it, I had to agree. I bought his mum a gift experience last year of a day to a perfume lab to learn all about how to make perfume and to make some perfume of her own. As she asks for perfume every year, I thought it would be a great idea. Incidentally, I bought my mum the same gift, and she thought it was amazing, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So, when Alex's mum opened her gift certificate, she read it from cover to cover and then looked at me and said, 'so, what is it?' It took me a full fifteen minutes to explain to her what it was, and that no, she didn't have to pay for it, and yes she could take a friend. She looked very dubious, and to this day, I have no idea if she went or not, and I don't want to ask her if she went, because if she didn't, I'd be seriously pissed of that I wasted £50 for nothing. So, this is obviously why a charitable gift would be way over her head, and it's not like she's stupid or anything, she was a teacher for crying out loud, so she must have some modicum of intelligence.



Personally I think charitable gifts are only good if you aren't going to see the recipient in person, or if you know the person really well, and know that they are something they really would appreciate. For some reason, a lot of people really don't like the idea of them. I think they are great, and if someone bought one for me, I think that would pretty great. Most of the presents we receive, aren't things we actually want, or need, and we have to pretend that we really like them so as not to hurt any one's feelings. Having said that, if my in-laws gave me a charitable gift instead of my usual birthday wad of cash, I can't say I'd be particularly impressed with that!



I haven't come across many different types of charitable gifts. Off the top of my head Oxfam is the first that comes to mind, as they were the ones I looked at. I also think other large charities such as Save the Children and Wold Vision do some. There are also charitable gifts such as animal adoption, which is also a great idea, although there is a great deal of variation from one company to another. Funnily enough, my daughter recently asked me if she could adopt a red panda (her favourite animal) using her pocket money which I looked into on her behalf. Most companies just go into adoption for the big selling endangered animals, such as tigers, giant pandas, rhinos, gorillas etc. You can also give money just to help a specific breed rather than an actual animal. For example, I give £2 a month to the WWF towards helping the tigers. Red Panda's aren't a particularly popular animal, so it was quite difficult to find an adoption scheme that not only benefited the pandas, but also my seven year old daughter. Eventually we found that at Chester Zoo (we go here often when we visit my mum), we could set up an adoption scheme that would help the animals, but would also give us some tickets to visit the zoo, and in particular, a special day where she got to meet the red panda keeper and ask any questions she may have. We decided that as it was a gift for her as well as being a donation to charity, that she could ask for it for her birthday, so as charitable gifts go, it's not massive, but for a seven year old girl to want to give part of her own pocket money to charity, I think it's quite amazing.