Should I Give a Cow or Cash for Christmas?
(Christianity Today, December 2013–click for full article at ChristianityToday.com.) What kind of Christmas present should you get for your rich uncle who has everything? Or perhaps even more importantly, what if that rich uncle is you?
An increasingly common Christmas present is a donation made to a poor family in a developing country in the name of a loved one. Increasingly, organizations such as the Heifer Project, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Kiva, and other charitable organizations send out gift catalogs and online promotions with a bounty of attractive Christmas gifts to choose from: a pig for a family in Nepal, a microfinance gift certificate for a budding entrepreneur in El Salvador, a freshwater well in Ethiopia. But which gifts have the biggest positive impact for the poor?
A few weeks ago the Heifer Project animal gift catalog made its annual pilgrimage through our mail slot, landing on our entryway floor right on time for the holidays. Donating a farm animal to a family in a developing country as a Christmas gift to another has become a tradition in our own family. Over the years, I have been the patron donor of chickens, a goat, rabbits, frankly, enough farm animals to make Old McDonald jealous. One year I gave (part) of a water buffalo to my younger brother.
So let’s discuss the impact of farm animal donation first. As a development economist, a nagging question for me had been whether this cute farm animal donation stuff really helped poor people overseas, or was just an ingenious way to make rich Americans feel less guilty about their holiday excesses. After having been on both the giving and receiving end of these donated farm animals for so many Christmases, it became imperative to investigate. (Read more at ChristianityToday.com.)