Christmas is the season to spend time with friends and family, but it’s also a time to think about others that are less fortunate.
Oxfam has launched a new generation of Oxfam Unwrapped gift cards in time for Christmas, encouraging Australians to think consciously about their gift giving this year.
The new gifts will help transform the lives of people living in poverty by providing life-changing essentials like food and clean water, but also helping women entrepreneurs kickstart their businesses or working with communities to find positive solutions to issues like climate change through advocacy.
Oxfam Australia chief executive, Lyn Morgain, says that the new range of Unwrapped gift cards are more important than ever given the current challenges that people are facing in low-income countries.
“Our new range of socially conscious gifts has been designed to help us tackle the inequalities that keep people in extreme poverty, such as empowering women with the skills and confidence they need to engage in business and politics,” she says.
“Rather than exchanging unwanted gifts at Christmas that may end up in landfill, Australians can choose to do something really positive at this time of year.”
For example, the Christmas Hand Loom gift will help to connect women in Sri Lanka with opportunities in a range of industries ranging from spice production to handloomed textiles so they can earn a decent living and lift their families out of poverty, while funds raised from the Megaphone gift card will help people in the Pacific region to tackle topics such as climate change.
Oxfam recently released its Naughty or Nice list of clothing brands that are still lagging behind when it comes to transparency around paying a living wage to the people who make their clothes in some of the world’s poorest nations.
“The interest in our recent Naughty or Nice list shows that Australians want to do some good when they buy something and purchasing an Unwrapped card gives them that opportunity,” adds Morgain.
Launched in 2006, for each Oxfam Unwrapped gift card a donation is made to a range of projects.
“Our Unwrapped gifts have been making an impact for 15 years now and they have funded material solutions to help people tackle poverty―be it a goat for a farmer in Afghanistan or a new well for a water-deprived community.”
