Our new Everything in Common Gift Catalogue is on its way, with brand new Christmas card designs to order. So we’re having a sale on what’s left of our current stock!
Usually $15, our current stock of Christmas cards are now $12 for a pack of eight designs (see pic above).
Or get three packs (24 cards) for $30!
Sending our Christmas cards to your friends, family and loved ones is a great way to fight poverty, build hope and inspire others about the work of our overseas partners. Sales of our Christmas cards represent a donation to support our work helping people lift themselves out of poverty in the Pacific, Asia and Africa.
Christmas card sales represent a donation to UnitingWorld and are tax deductible in Australia.
New Everything in Common Catalogue 2022
Every Christmas, we release a catalogue of gifts that represent many of our projects with overseas partners. It’s called Everything in Common.
In it you can find great poverty-fighting gifts like goats, pigs, clean water, education and livelihood opportunities, as well as gifts that support gender equality and care for creation. Our new Christmas cards will also be available soon.
Don and Sylvia Wright, from Hervey Bay in Queensland, have been running Everything in Common gift stalls for UnitingWorld at Christmas for a few years now.
It’s a simple concept: buy a card for a loved one that represents a ‘gift’ to help someone overcome poverty: a goat, clean water, school books…
The Wrights send gift cards every year to their children who live overseas, and they love having the chance to put into practice the call to love their global neighbours through practical help and generosity. But they also get a kick out of learning from others.
“Everything in Common focuses on the needs of our partners in non-Western cultures, and we’ve learnt so much from hearing about them and how they’re meeting the challenges facing their communities,” the Wrights say.
“But we also love the chance to chat with others in our congregation and hear about their experiences travelling or supporting communities outside of Australia. We’ve developed some really strong friendships through running the stalls!”
UnitingWorld supplies everything you need to run an Everything in Common gift stall, like cards and promotional posters. It’s easy and the funds you’ll raise have a big impact. Over the last five years, people like the Wrights have helped us inject more than $2 million into projects that provide clean water, education, small business start-ups and much more.
“Consider getting involved in running a stall as you’re able, or plan to help promote the gifts in other ways if congregations are still unable to meet,” say the Wrights. “You can be part of talking with others about the needs of the wider world and experience just how effective accountable giving can be.”
Alternatively, you can call us on 1800 998 122 or email info@unitingworld.org.au to get your gift stall up and running from October through to Christmas.
Each year we release new Christmas card designs that support the work of our overseas partners fighting poverty and building hope in their communities.
Sending our Christmas cards to your friends, family and loved ones is a great way to support people striving to be free from poverty and also inspire others about the work of our overseas partners.
E-card instructions (e-cards $3 each and must be added to the cart one at a time)
Choose a design from the dropdown menu
Choose a recipient and add a personal message
Add to cart
Add an optional donation
Repeat! (each e-card must be added to the cart one at a time)
When you’re done – head to the checkout for payment
We all say Christmas isn’t about the presents, and we mean it.
Ask around. It’s about family and friends, our neighbourhoods buzzing with community spirit, parents belting out Michael Bublé or Mariah Carey to annoy their children…
It’s about beingpresent. A time to come together, sharing our lives in kindness and gratitude.
So why do we still buy so much stuff?
Each year, we’re confronted by the enormous and growing commercial enterprise Christmas has become. A season of hyper-consumption fed by accelerated production the world over.
We eat more, travel more, buy more and produce 30% more waste than at any other time of the year. Every December in Australia, we give an average of 20 million gifts that are unwanted and at least half of them quickly end up in landfill.
We all want to be generous during our favourite time of year, but collectively our Christmas giving creates pollution and waste that has a huge environmental impact.
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to be generous without more stuff, more waste and more CO2 in the atmosphere.
One way to think about it, is that every dollar we spend is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.
Here’s six gift ideas that don’t cost the planet.
1. Gifts that fight poverty
Think of charitable organisations that reflect the values of your loved ones (like us!). Donate in their honour or give a poverty-fighting giftthat can change a life. What could be a better gift than clean water to a community that doesn’t have it? Or income opportunities like goats and pig-farming to help a struggling family secure their future?
Check out our full catalogue of life-changing gifts here. They come as gift cards with envelopes, or you can even go completely digital and send via email.
2. Give an experience
Theatre, concerts, workshops, community and cultural events often fly under the radar because there’s so much competing for our attention each week.
People say rock is dead and nimbys killed live music, but that will only happen if people stop going! The first step is getting some tickets…
Give someone an escape from the office to places like this urban farm that runs useful workshops on organic gardening, pickling and preserving, beekeeping and how to make things like beeswax wraps and hand-carved kitchen utensils.
Or give an experience outdoors with eco/wildlife tours, kayaking, canyoning, snorkelling (or shark dive, anyone?)
Visit a local community market, there’s usually great plants for great prices. Find some nice pots (second-hand/recycled even) to put them in. Give them to loved ones and they’ll grow into some really thoughtful and unique gifts. You can even pair it with a gift card that supports tree-planting projects in the Pacific and Indonesia!
4. Give time
It’s an absurdity of modern life that despite all our technological advancements – still we work more. Pledging your time could be a thoughtful and useful gift.
Maybe your in-laws could use some extended babysitting to get away for the day? Perhaps your dad can’t get up the ladder to do the gutters any more? Or your partner has been meaning to get their bike serviced but hasn’t had the time to do it?
Imagine asking your grandma if your gift this year can be time spent helping her with the garden…
Yes, you should do these things anyway, so why don’t you?
You could even pledge your time in a card with an explanation and deadline, so they know you mean business.
5. Buy second-hand
Fifty dollars for a T-shirt? Nah mate.
Buying at your local op shop saves you money, cuts down consumer demand for stuff to be produced and supports organisations making positive change in the world. That’s something to dance about.
Onto Gumtree yet? It’s a brilliant place to save a few second-hand treasures from landfill to be re-gifted.
6. Buy local, buy sustainable
Want to reduce your global impact? Think local. Buy from local small businesses, craftspeople, those grandmas selling delicious jams at the school fete. Stuff that hasn’t been shipped across half the world to arrive under your tree.
Why not bake something yourself? Rise up a whole army of gingerbread men to scale a pyramid of brownies.
Vote for a better world with your choices this Christmas.
Disclaimer: vote with your whole community. We know that to overcome the global challenges we face, individual action isn’t enough. We also need drastic changes to our social, political and economic systems to mitigate the climate crisis ahead.
This global problem requires global action.
Truly purposive action is holistic – individual behavioural change leading to important ‘awkward conversations’ in our communities, plus collective action aiming to influence widespread societal change.
The choices we make as consumers have already been influencing producers, but there’s a long way to go.
We each have the power to make a difference and it can start this Christmas.
This blog was inspired by an internal conversation among UnitingWorld staff to share sustainable Christmas gift ideas. Credit to everyone who fed the great discussion.
Uncle Earl is squinting at your card, breath a little yeasty from the Christmas pudding, and frankly, he’s disappointed. It was socks he wanted. Seriously. Socks. Or a fishing magazine. He also had his eye on a new case for his iphone.
You got him a goat.
“Well, it’s for a family in Zimbabwe, see?” you tell him, a little flustered. “They’ll breed the goats and with the money they can get for them at the market, they’ll send their kids to school. It’s pretty cool, actually.”
Uncle Earl looks sceptical. He doesn’t actually say it, but what he’s thinking – you can see it on his face – is: “So you got me nothing. You got them goats, but you got me nothing.”
Let’s face it: not everyone loves goats, and not everyone gets the idea that you bought them something for someone else. (And actually, some people genuinely need socks).
So here you are, with your desire to do something to change the world this Christmas, and a cranky Uncle. What to do… what to do?
Look, buy Uncle Earl the socks. Buy your seven year old nephew that game he wanted, but maybe not the really flashy one. And tell him the true story of a gift that transforms lives. Start it with the birth of a child. But don’t end it there.
Tell him about Amos, who’ll spend the days before Christmas in his ute in South Sudan, bucketing along some of the worst roads you can imagine. He’s travelling to spend time in communities who’ve seen their neighbours literally torn apart by violence. This is Amos’ whole life’s work, devoted to helping people understand and listen to one another, learning to forgive and move on from decades of a war that doesn’t just live in army fatigues but stalks people’s homes and lives in people’s minds. This gift of reconciliation – a microcosm of something even grander – is the ongoing story that begins with the cradle.
If the people you know and love won’t appreciate the idea behind a goat, don’t give up. Simply make your donation directly to the work of someone who continues to live the Christmas story – every day, in some of the most difficult parts of our globe.
Christmas isn’t just about making sure your nearest and dearest have everything they need. Christmas is about being swept up in a powerful gift of love and sharing that as far and wide as you can. Every single one of us.
If you want to be generous because it’s Christmas and you believe in a world less hungry and more hopeful, please give here. https://unitingworld.org.au/donate
Either way, know that you’ve honoured the Giver. Thank you so much.
Coming soon:
Questions my hairdresser asks: how do you even know they get the money?
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New Everything in Common Catalogue 2022
