2014 Christmas Gift Guide: World Vision! (U.S.) Ends 12/9 #giveaway #GiftCatalog #SponsorAChild #WorldVision #ChristmasGiftGuide #HolidayGiftGuide

Here in the United States, World Vision’s Teacher Resource Center (TRC) program provides new school supplies, backpacks, clothing, and other classroom resources to students in schools across the United States with 70 percent or higher poverty rates. For the most part, teachers and other school staff come to a World Vision warehouse facility or mobile TRC and “shop,” free of charge, for the products most useful to their students and classrooms. Occasionally, special events are held and product is distributed at the school. The FY13 TRC teacher survey was undertaken in response to requests from World Vision U.S. programs staff for information that could be used with current and future supporters to illustrate the impact of the TRC on children, teachers, and classrooms across America.

Poverty and its related problems produce a sense of hopelessness among young people in poor communities across America. Teenagers are often dismissed as part of the problem and rarely valued as part of the solution, especially in our most vulnerable areas. Young people who feel helpless, isolated, and unconnected to school, work, and other basic social structures are far less likely to make a successful transition to productive lives as adults. The Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) equips young people to become agents of change, capable of creating positive futures for themselves, their families, and their communities. Unlike many student leadership development projects, World Vision’s program engages young people from high-risk neighborhoods

World Vision also helps people in Africa, Asia, India, everywhere in the world actually! You can sponsor a child, donate money from $50 to $100 to help fight Ebola in Africa, or to help vaccine at child in another county. You can donate money to help people with clothing, clean water, chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits, sheep, a fishing net, a pig, and more! For $650, you can purchase a cow for a family in need! You can help a child go to school, with clothing and shelter, career training for a mother, and so much more!

You can also purchase Hand Crafted Gifts made from people in other countries. Your purchases of these products helps other people in need. How awesome would it be if you purchased all of your Christmas Gifts that are for others in your family or for your friends, with handmade gifts from World Vision! You could purchase a gift for someone, and you'd be helping those in need by doing so!

I had a chance to review a set of "Hand-Carved Serving Spoons." These are the perfect gift for holiday entertaining, each beautiful set of two hand-carved olivewood serving spoons is delivered in a gift bag of African fabric hand-sewn by local women. The serving spoons are made to benefit orphans of the Kamba tribe in Kenya. ($65 value) 

Since it began in 1996, the World Vision Gift Catalog has grown in popularity as a gift-giving alternative; more than 844,000 people helped someone through the Catalog in the last fiscal year alone. To order from World Vision’s Gift Catalog, visit www.worldvisiongifts.org or call 855-WV-GIFTS.

Follow Worldvision on Facebook and Twitter @WorldVisionNews.

Enter below using the Rafflecopter form for a chance to win your own set of Hand-Carved Serving Spoons! Giveaway is open to residents of the main 48 continental United States, 18 years of age and older.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I received a set of Hand-Carved Serving Spoons from World Vision in exchange for my post. No other compensation was exchanged or received. Airplanes and Dragonflies is not responsible for mailing out your prize. The sponsor, World Vision, will send out the prize to the winner.