Well for me anyway.

Anyone who knows me and my ENGAGED sister, know that when we get sad, or something bad happens, or we feel like we need a treat, we go shopping.

I now have a huge collection of earrings because of this.

However, last weekend, I was watching a sad movie and couldn’t bring myself to hit the shops (I’m actually only half serious, before you all accuse me of being a consumer-driven generation-whatever-I-am-er), so I hit Amazon.

There were tonnes of books I’ve been meaning to buy and I did kind of want to experience Amazon shopping, so I bought up large.

I still haven’t received my order (which is fine, I’m like at the bottom of the world), but I was talking about it to Emma and she told me in future times of sadness, go to Goodbooksnz.com, which is an NZ based online book store with no delivery fees and ALL the profits go to Oxfam.

Charities doing it wrong

I had to laugh last week while walking down the street. Every day is the official day of another charity, and all they do is head to every street corner and stand there looking glum. Often they wear these massive bibs that exclaim ‘STREET DONATION DRIVE ‘08′ or something then in very small letters the actual charity you are donating to.

You either peer at them closely to find out if you want to support their cause, or give up and walk past to avoid invading their personal space so you can read about what they do from their chest.

Other charities station 2 girls on opposite sites of the same footpath so you have to funnel through them to get past while the exclaim brightly ‘hello, how are you?’. Even though I walk past them every day and they still don’t recognise me so am therefore mildly offended, I am shocked and amazed at how people blatantly just ignore them, like they are lower than sewer rats.

Neither of these seem a very sustainable way to draw positive, sustained attention to your cause.

Oxfam does it right

Yes, I have received a chicken for christmas, and I know quite a few people who tucked into their christmas turkey knowing their present was a goat heading off to a family where food is not taken for granted. Such a simple idea, but so successful. We feel GOOD giving Oxfam money because we are giving someone a present.

And now this website for books. They have totally mastered the art of offering people value for money. And I know charity is all about the gift of giving, but if all you do is give and give and give and know that it doesn’t go towards anything that makes anything that will become sustainable, you just want to give up giving. But Oxfam are starting real life businesses that mean we can make every day choices about giving them money.

It just struck me as brilliant. So use it.