Growing up, I was taught the importance of giving back… we’d go to the store and select toys for toy drives, and put together baskets for food drives. In high school and college, I belonged to organizations that had regularly scheduled days to serve food to the homeless. My parents always drove around with a few bags filled with water and non-perishable food items that could easily be handed to someone in need. Having children of my own now, the act of giving to others, whatever that might look like, is something I want to instill within them from a young age. So when I started thinking about the 2020 holiday season, I figured now was as good a time as any to really share with my kids how we give back as a family.
And luckily, Amazon makes it easy to give back with AmazonSmile and AmazonSmile Charity Lists. When you start your shopping at smile.amazon.com, they will automatically donate a portion of the purchase price of eligible products to a charity of your choice, at no extra cost to you. You can easily visit Amazon’s Holiday Store at smile.amazon.com/holiday for everything you need (and more) this holiday season – and all products marked with “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” on their product detail pages or with AmazonSmile ON in the Amazon Shopping app all count towards a donation to your selected organization.
This year, our family searched through the countless participating in AmazonSmile and decided to select CHILD International as our charity of choice. CHILD International is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping displaced children reach their full potential through empowerment, access to education, housing and family assistance programs. Having spent almost 10 years working in a therapeutic setting with displaced children, their mission statement of envisioning “a future where all displaced children have an equal opportunity for a successful life,” truly resonated with me. And while our girls are young, Harper is definitely old enough to understand the concept of giving back. So once we selected our charity, this opened up a rich conversation with her about doing so. We can easily track the amount of donations we have generated for CHILD International on the AmazonSmile homepage.
If you wish to donate products of need to a charitable organization, you can easily do so through AmazonSmile Charity Lists. When you visit smile.amazon.com/charitylists, you can search by keyword for your favorite organization or browse charities by cause, with everything from pets + animals to education + youth. Once you select a category, hundreds of charities will appear with their mission and goal stated under their name. When you find the charity you would like to shop for, you can simply click on their Charity List to see all of the items the need – simply add items to your cart and they will ship directly to the organization at their designated address. It’s such an easy way to give back!
If you prefer to make a monetary donation, just ask any Alexa enabled device. Simply say, “Alexa, I want to make a donation” to get started.
So while 2020 has presented some very challenging times to so many this year, these are small, simple ways to spread a little extra joy this holiday season to those in need! Pay it forward and share how you’re giving back with #DeliveringSmiles.
Thank you to Amazon for sponsoring this post.
