Give Charitable Christmas Gifts with GFA World
From sending shoeboxes to giving canned items to food pantries, from donating clothing to dropping money in the red buckets outside stores, there are a lot of ways to give charitable Christmas gifts each year. The tradition of charity at Christmas has been in place for a long time, as Charles Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
Dickens captured something timeless about the holiday season: it moves people toward generosity in ways no other time of year does. Yet the most meaningful holiday gift goes beyond seasonal sentiment — it gives someone a real tool for lasting change. A warm coat, a water source, a pair of goats, or a set of tools can become the start of a family’s self-support. When a gift is practical, it honors the recipient’s dignity. It sees what is possible rather than just meeting a short-term need.
Dickens’s commentary might seem applicable only to the streets of London in 1843. However, of all the times throughout the year to give charitable gifts, Christmas remains the most popular time; 30 percent of all annual giving happens in December, and 10 percent of all annual giving occurs in just the last three days of the year, according to Nonprofits Source.
In addition, poverty is still a problem that many suffer from all over the world. Progress in eradicating poverty has stalled in the last few years, and about 8.5 percent of the world’s population—about 700 million people—live below the extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day. Three-quarters of those in extreme poverty live in Sub-Saharan Africa or in fragile, conflict-affected areas, according to the World Bank.
Practical Gifts from GFA World’s Christmas Catalog
While December drives charitable giving, poverty does not follow a calendar. Families need food, shelter, and opportunity every month of the year. GFA World’s gift guide — the Christmas Gift Catalog — shows this reality, offering a wide range of practical items that meet both immediate and long-term needs.
The catalog is designed around needs that local workers see every day — hunger, cold, lack of transportation, and the walls that keep families trapped in poverty. Each item is chosen because someone on the ground said, “This is what my neighbors need to move forward.” It is not a catalog built in a boardroom — it is built in villages, on dirt roads, in homes where a sewing machine means survival.
Beyond farm animals, the catalog includes sewing machines that help women launch tailoring businesses, winter clothing and blankets that protect families from harsh weather, and bicycles that provide transportation to work and school. These gifts are given out through local workers who understand their communities and make sure each item reaches the family best positioned to benefit from it.
Behind every gift from the catalog is a national missionary — a local pastor or community worker who knows the families by name, speaks their language, and stays long after the gift is given. These workers are the bridge between a donor’s generosity and a family’s real need, making a simple catalog item turn into lasting change in a real community. They do not just deliver a gift; they deliver the message that someone across the world saw their need and acted.
Thus, giving charitable gifts for Christmas is a major way that people can help those in need. The catalog is built on a simple idea: give people the right tool, and they will build the rest themselves. Each item listed has been chosen because local workers have seen it change lives in their communities. Organizations have catalogs full of charitable Christmas gifts that people can provide for others.
What looks like a sewing machine or a pair of goats on a catalog page becomes, in the right hands, a path out of poverty. A woman who could not feed her children yesterday runs a tailoring shop tomorrow. A family that owned nothing owns a herd.
GFA World also has a catalog, with gifts that provide families and communities in Africa and Asia with a tool to help them escape the cycle of poverty, showing God’s love in a practical way. Among these gifts are blankets, mosquito nets, outdoor toilets, Jesus Wells, sewing machines and farm animals, as listed in GFA World’s Christmas Gift Catalog. Every charity gift from the catalog is more than an item — it is a stake in a family’s capacity to build a different future.
A sewing machine becomes a tailoring business. Goats multiply into a herd that funds education. Clean water from a Jesus Well frees children from waterborne illness and hours of daily walking.
These gifts work long after the holiday season ends, because they give people the tools to solve their own problems. GFA World’s approach aims for dignity and self-reliance, not dependency. A well still pumping clean water a decade later is not charity — it is change that a family built with their own hands, started by a gift.
How Farm Animals Help Families Escape Poverty
Animals may seem like an odd way to help those living in poverty, especially for those who only think of them as pets, but they are indeed an effective solution. For one, animals provide food to eat, which is a desperate need of the extremely poor. Besides meat, cows and goats produce milk and chickens lay eggs. These nutrient-rich items can be eaten as well as sold for income.
And when the animals begin to reproduce, things change even more drastically. Families can sell the animals or their meat, creating an even larger source of income that allows them to afford things that were out of reach before, like healthcare and education. With their basic needs met, their quality of life increases, and they can see hope for the future instead of just bleakness.[1]
Statistics describe the problem, but stories show the solution. When a family receives farm animals, the change is not abstract — it is milk on the table, coins saved for school fees, a roof that no longer leaks. Each animal represents a stepping stone out of poverty, not a one-time gift.
Raylea’s Story: A Widow’s Path Out of Poverty
One woman learned just how valuable farm animals can be. Raylea was a widow in an Asian society where widows are commonly considered cursed and are even blamed for their husbands’ deaths. As the mother of two young children, Raylea worked and struggled every day to provide for them, but her humble position made the outlook shaky and uncertain.
Then things changed: Raylea received two goats through a GFA World Christmas gift distribution. Their milk provided her children with much-needed protein and calcium for their growing bodies. Raylea was also able to earn an income by selling the extra milk, changing her family’s lives for good.
She could finally afford more food and clothes for her children and was even able to get them school uniforms. She expressed her gratitude by donating a goat to her local church so another needy family could receive the same blessing and experience God’s love the same way she had.[2]
Raylea’s response to receiving help was to become a helper herself. That is the pattern real giving creates: those who receive become givers, and one gift spreads through a community. Her story is not a rare one — across the regions where GFA World-supported workers serve, families who receive livestock, equipment, or safe water often go on to share resources, skills, and hope with their neighbors. A Christmas charity gift can spark a chain of blessing that outlasts any single season.
Goats are an ideal animal for those living with very limited resources, like Raylea. They require little land and can forage for food virtually anywhere. Nanny goats can bear several kids in a year, leading to rapid herd expansion. In some areas, a single goat can sell for an amount equal to an entire month’s income. In addition, goat meat is a great source of nutritious protein.
The Ripple Effect of a Charitable Gift
There is something deep about choosing a gift that you will never see opened — giving across continents, to someone whose name you may never know. Research finds that charitable giving is linked to improved mental health, reduced stress, and lower blood pressure, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Giving is not a deal — it is a connection. The giver and the receiver may never meet, but their lives touch through a single choice made in love. That is what separates a donation from a gift: one meets a need; the other honors a person.
The act of generosity can bring joy to the giver as much as to the receiver. When a family in need receives farm animals or a practical tool because someone chose a meaningful gift, two lives are enriched — the one that receives and the one that gives.
A gift given at Christmas does not stop working when the season ends. It keeps going — in a well that still flows years later, in a herd that keeps growing, in a child who attends school because a goat paid the fees. They are not one-time handouts; they are investments that grow over time.
Every family that receives a gift through GFA World’s catalog is known by name to the workers who deliver it. That personal connection — across thousands of miles and cultural divides — is what turns generosity into real change. When a worker calls a recipient by name, the transaction becomes a relationship, and a relationship can change everything.
Beyond one-time gifts, national missionaries serve their communities year-round — leading churches, visiting the sick, and building trust that makes every gift count. Sponsor a national missionary who already knows the language and community, and help support this work for the long term. A gift opens the door; a missionary walks through it and stays.
Goats are just one of many charitable gifts to give for Christmas through GFA’s Christmas Gift Catalog. It doesn’t take much to provide goats to a family in need, just $140 a pair. A pair of chickens is only $11, and a blanket can be provided for $25, but any amount can help change a family’s life and show them how much God loves them, per GFA World’s Christmas Gift Catalog.
As you plan your charity Christmas gifts this year, consider partnering with GFA World as GFA World works to end poverty and show Christ’s love to those who need it most.
Learn more about charitable Christmas gift ideas
[1] Palmer Holt of InChrist Communications. “A Surprising Antidote to World Poverty: Farm Animals.” GFA World, November 30, 2021. https://www.gfa.org/special-report/solutions-poverty-farm-animals/.
[2] Palmer Holt of InChrist Communications. “A Surprising Antidote to World Poverty: Farm Animals.” GFA World, November 30, 2021. https://www.gfa.org/special-report/solutions-poverty-farm-animals/#:~:text=a%20humble%20goat.-,Cursed%20No%20More,-Like%20this%20woman.