Days 6 and 7

Moving on with my holiday charity list, we have days 6 and 7! (Anyone else think December is flying by?)

Day 6: The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is not only an incredible charity organization, but it has a pretty cool history as well. It was founded in 1865 in England, and has done an enormous amount of charity work in the last 147 years, specifically targeting the homeless and impoverished world-wide.

Their Mission: Mission statement from their website, "The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. Its message is based on the Bible. Its ministry is motivated by the love of God. Its mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination." They do work that focuses on aid for the homeless, rehabilitation for prisoners, disaster relief, youth outreach, services for the elderly, and human trafficking intervention, in addition to many other functions. It's basically a one-stop shop for almost any do-gooder.

What you can do: Donate food, cars, clothes, money, and other necessities, give monetarily, and, of course, volunteer. The Salvation Army operates on a huge volunteer base. According to their site, "More than 3,400,000 individuals of all ages volunteered their time, talents, and resources to assist The Salvation Army's work in FY 2010. Our volunteers are critical partners in helping us fulfill our promise to America of 'Doing the Most Good.'" They have a resource that allows you to find a place for your time and talents. If you are reading this, consider at least dropping a $5 in the little red kettle to make the bell-ringing Santa happy this year.

Day 7: Wikipedia.org

I know, I know, it's not a very sexy recommendation, but hear me out. Wikipedia provides good-quality information on basically everything. It's the compendium of all human knowledge, and it's free, and anyone with a computer has access to it. I know that my husband practically lives on it, and not a day goes by without me using it. It basically equips even the poorest person with good information to educate himself or herself. It's also available in 285 languages.

Their mission statement is: "The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity."

I think this is pretty cool. So please, if you use it, throw a few bucks Wikipedia's way this year.