My seven (and a half) year old son picked up the gift catalog from Heifer International
and asked me what it was for. So I explained to him that people like us
could buy things that people in very poor places need as a Christmas
gift. And because they don’t have much, then buying a goat, a chicken,
or a cow would help them more than games or toys.

It was an amazing conversation that resulted in both of us wanting to do something for somebody else this year for Christmas.

Deciding what to do wasn’t difficult either. We’ve both been praying
for Haiti since the earthquakes, and he’s specifically prayed for the
orphans there. I even made a trip there this summer, and lived in an orphanage during my stay.

So I told him about a friend that I recently made at The Idea Camp conference. Chris Marlow runs an organization called HELP (Help End Local Poverty) and an initiative called Garage Sale for Orphans.

One of the current Garage Sale projects is to build a playground for orphans in Haiti. The website describes it this way:

Extreme poverty not only robs children of food,
education and proper medical care, but it often keeps kids from just
being kids. We want to help meet more than just their basic needs. We
want to see them HAVE FUN and just play and be kids!!!

So we’re taking this project on for Christmas this year,
and we wanted to invite others to join us. We live in Florida, so it’s
reasonable for us to hold an actual garage sale this time of year. But
there are many other ways that you can help raise money so that we can
meet the goal of $3,500 to give this playground to some Haitian kids for
Christmas.

I’ll be sharing about this project over the coming weeks both here and at Christmas Change
(I’ll be a guest blogger there this year). And I’d love to offer a
couple of guest post posts to anyone crazy enough to take this project
on with Samuel and I (no matter where you live).

Here are the posts that I plan on sharing…

• the importance of play [guest post from @chrismarlow]
• how to plan a [garage sale for orphans]
• building a playground in haiti [our garage sale results]
• One Boy’s Special Gift (@ Christmas Change)
• [guest post from @justapen]
• [guest post from ???]

Here are some posts that others are writing about this…

• Paying Forward…sorta (Seiji Yamashita)
• One Family’s Radical Christmas (Crystal Rowe)

If you want to join or support our efforts, then let me know in the
comments below. I’m happy to work with you in any way that I can if it
means that we can meet the goal of giving this gift to some Haitian
kids. You can host your own fundraiser, or even just make an individual donation.