Gift ideas that push back the darkness

Forget the necktie that will sit in Dad’s closet or the perfume that your sister Sue will soon regift, for I have some better ideas, Nicholas Kristof writes. (Sebastian Kong/The New York Times)

By Nicholas Kristof

Forget the necktie that will sit in Dad’s closet or the perfume that your sister Sue will soon regift, for I have some better ideas.

This is my annual holiday giving guide, and I think you’ll like the charities I recommend this year — and so will Dad and Sue if you contribute in their names. You can donate and find out more information through my Kristof Holiday Impact Prize website, KristofImpact.org, which I’ve used for the past six years to support nonprofits in my giving guide.

Here’s what your contributions can accomplish this year:

Give a woman her life back! One of the most heartbreaking conditions I’ve reported on is obstetric fistula, a childbirth injury that happens in poor countries when a woman endures many hours of obstructed labor and no doctor is available to perform a C-section. The baby usually dies, and the woman is left with injuries affecting the vaginal wall and the bladder or rectum, so she continuously leaks bodily waste.

These women — sometimes just teenage girls — can feel stigmatized and humiliated, even that they have been cursed by God.

The good news is that together we can help them reclaim their lives, with a corrective surgery that costs just $619 per person. A nonprofit called the Fistula Foundation has financed more than 100,000 surgeries through a network of more than 150 hospitals in more than 30 countries. Yet need remains enormous.

Save a child’s life! One of the worst things that can happen to someone is to lose a child, and that is still far too common in poor countries. In the West African country of Mali, for example, almost 1 in 10 children died before the age of 5 as of 2017.

An organization called Muso Health has figured out how to deploy community health workers in remote places and save large numbers of children. When Muso Health moved into Mali, child mortality in the areas where it worked fell an astonishing 95% over seven years, according to a published study. That’s because children were much more likely to be treated promptly for malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and other ailments.

One recently published study found that even in an area with escalating armed conflict, Muso reduced child deaths by 63%. In addition to Mali, Muso now works in five other African countries to help improve care, but resources remain scarce.

All this is a bargain: The cost of bringing one more person into the Muso health care network is only $22 per year.

Help a child learn to read! Books were my childhood’s magic carpets that lifted me on the lifelong journey that now leads me to write this column. I owe so much to “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and to Freddy the Pig. But too many kids in America today don’t have books, library cards or parents accustomed to reading to them.

That’s where Reach Out and Read comes in. It hands out children’s books to low-income American families — more than 7 million books last year — but even more important, it piggybacks on well-child visits to pediatricians, who encourage parents to read to the child regularly.

The doctors give a book on each visit, from birth until the program ends at the age of 5. That amounts to 14 or 15 books for a child in the program.

For those who don’t have money to donate but do have time, I also offer an option for volunteering:

Walk someone through a personal crisis! We’ve all heard about rising mental health problems and the loneliness epidemic, affecting young people in particular, and Crisis Text Line offers a way for you to help. It’s a 24/7 service in which trained volunteers provide free, confidential mental health support, all by text messages.

Why texts rather than voice calls? Young people are used to texting, and some people may find texting less embarrassing than a phone conversation. Crisis Text Line supports 3,500 text conversations each day with the help of about 15,000 active volunteers, handling everything from bullying concerns to suicidal feelings. To reach the service, people wanting help simply text “hello” to 741741.

Volunteers get training online for 15 to 20 hours, including practice with a conversation simulator, before they are connected to incoming texts. In an emergency, a volunteer can get help from staff supervisors who jump in to assist.

More than 90% of the volunteers report that their own mental health improves as a result of their participation.

These are nonprofits that change the world and give each of us the chance to help others in profound ways. Whether your priority is helping women and girls overcome a devastating gynecological condition or saving children’s lives or helping kids learn to love books, these are transformative causes, and each organization has an excellent record. As we prepare for the holidays, I’m betting your kids or siblings or friends would get more of a kick from a donation in their names to one of these nonprofits than from a fruit basket.

If you’re feeling dispirited by national or global events, remember the adage that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. It feels like a relief and privilege at this time to be able to do something so positive. So I hope you’ll visit KristofImpact.org to donate or volunteer; this is your chance to be a miracle worker.

Contact Kristof at Facebook.com/Kristof, Twitter.com/NickKristof or by mail at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.