I first heard about it one morning in Starbucks. The woman ahead of me in line was talking with the baristas as she waited for her nonfat latte, and mentioned that she'd found a great source for hard-to-please or already-has-everything family members. “It's very cool,” she told us. “It's this website where you can donate a cow in someone else's name.”

The website is Alternative Gifts International and while you can't really (at least in this year's catalogue) buy a cow, you can donate money to be used for a pig or an ox (for a family in Uganda) or a day of tutoring (for a child in LA) or textbooks for kids in Haiti, or water purification equipment for folks in Tanzania.

I'm all for donating to worthy causes, and pleasing people at the same time, and while I won't necessarily do any giftgiving from AGI this year, I'm intrigued enough to post about it, thus creating an instant reminder.

Cross-posted to Pensieri Casuali