Socially Conscious Unique Gifts

I have been giving unique gifts to friends and family for years. I used to have trouble finding socially conscious gifts, but with the advent of the internet this has gotten pretty easy. I like to find handcrafted items that are fairly traded.

I have purchased several engraved gourd birdhouses that are imported from Peru. I have given only one as a gift and it was truly appreciated. I gave the birdhouse to a home for the elderly in my community.

I found something in my stash of unique gifts to give to a family that just recently had their third child. I had a stone statue from Kenya that depicted a family of five with theirs arms linked in a dance of love. It was a lovely tribute to the family I gave it to.

My mother always giggles at my choices for unique gifts. Last Christmas I gave her hand-woven baskets with wooden handles from Haiti. She has filled them with artificial flowers and keeps them on display in her den.

I keep a lot of unique gifts in my house to take to people's homes as hostess gifts. My favorite of the hostess gifts is organically grown, fairly traded, tea. I get tea that is grown in the Darjeeling region of India. The tea comes in five varieties, but I only purchase two of them.

My teenage daughter has even joined me in giving unique gifts to her friends. She found a website that sells clutch style purses from Mexico that are hand made using candy wrappers. She gave one to each of her friends last Christmas.

I belong to a book club and at our summer meeting, I gave each of them a



bookmark. This may not seem like they were unique gifts, but they were. I purchased them through an organization called the Hunger Site. I purchased fifteen bookmarks, so the Hunger Site was able to fund 375 cups of food for the world's hungry.

Several of my mother's friends have been raving about the unique gifts I come up with. They particularly liked the crocheted flower pins that I gave them a couple of years ago. They were really pretty and came in dark pink and orange. They were made in Macedonia by hand.

My niece was looking for unique gifts to give to her bridesmaids at her wedding. I found some really nice sandals for her to give that were hand carved out of singles pieces of wood. They were well received and I got a few phone calls after the wedding inquiring as to where more could be purchased. These were just one more item I found online at The Child Health Site that improves the quality of health worldwide for children.


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