Give Life This Holiday Season: Not All Donations Will Cost You

During the Holiday season, people tend to open their wallets for more than just personal gift purchasing. People become more charitable, and want to help those less fortunate. Aside from giving canned goods to food banks, and buying toys for children's toy drives, there are other organizations that need your help, and tend to be overlooked as we whip into our usual Holiday giving frenzies.

Heifer Project International is a great charity that provides livestock for impoverished families around the world, even in the United States. Giving the livestock helps the family in the present and future. For example, purchasing a hen and a rooster will give a hungry family eggs from the hen to eat, and allow the two birds to reproduce, thus giving the family meat on the table as well. There are many various livestock purchase options, and some, like cows or ducks, can be bought in shares. If several people send in money on a share of a cow, once the cow is paid for, it will be sent to a needy family. Heifer Project International has a website that includes all of the details and how you can help.

Donating blood is something we all can do whether or not there is a blood-mobile set up on a shopping center parking lot. Accidents are more likely to happen around holidays with the increased number of traffic and crime. Donating blood is free, and there always seems to be a need for blood from healthy donors. Not everyone will be allowed to give blood, but if you feel like you are healthy enough to give, call the Red Cross and ask for donation times and dates. Every little bit counts.

Blood plasma is used to treat shock, burn victims, and hemophilia. A lot of people are unaware that 55% of the volume of human blood is made up by plasma. Plasma also helps maintain blood pressure, carries blood cells, nutrients, enzymes and hormones, and supplies critical proteins for blood clotting and immunity. The plus to donating plasma is that there are plasma donation centers that pay for it. Donating plasma has often been used as a way for people to make a few fast dollars, but at the same time, it's saving lives.

Some organs can be harvested from living donors. Kidneys and liver are two organs that living donors can give. Somewhere there is someone on a list eagerly awaiting a kidney or liver to save their life. Also, your bone marrow can be donated to someone who desperately needs it. Many times, people are on waiting lists for organs and bone marrow, and die before they can get it. If more living donors were on lists to give a liver, kidney, or bone marrow, less deaths would occur.

A lot of people are unaware that they can give gifts without any cost. Life is precious, and irreplaceable. If just one person donates an organ or blood, one more person will live. While we enjoy the company of our family and friends this Holiday season, perhaps mentioning these ways to give will inspire someone else to do the same.