I’m planning to conspire with maybe a couple of other volunteers at my local mutual aid org to put together some end-of-year present hampers aimed towards kids.

This will be intended for children who are homeless or facing serious poverty so they can have some nice things like other kids get to have at Christmas time (I’m in a culturally Christian country so it’s the big annual gift-giving celebration here.)

Do you have any suggestions for what could be good to include?

Obviously I’m looking for lower cost items so that we can stretch our money as far as we can and I’m looking for ideas for things that are more oriented towards enjoyable gifts over giving a kid more mundane items like socks and writing pads.

My plan at the moment is to do two age brackets, with one set of hampers being aimed at a <10yo bracket and another that is >10yo, approximately.

Any hot ideas for stocking filler/secret santa style gifts for kids?

  • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    22 days ago

    I don’t know if this is out of the planned budget range, but maybe e-ink readers? Small, light, super long battery life. There’s a lot out there now that are relatively low-cost and don’t need an account or subscription or active internet connection. I apologize for the amazon link but something like this combined with a microSD card loaded with pirated epubs might be just the thing for a kid who loves reading but is in a precarious living situation.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      2·
      22 days ago

      That’s a very cool idea for a gift and it would probably be perfect in the right hands.

      The problem is the cost because covering just 10 gifts like that with SD cards is probably going to run at around $1.5k which is a bit steep, especially if there’s no telling whether a kid would be happy with this as a present.

      What your comment has made me think about is raising the suggestion with my co-conspirators to see if it would be viable to establish a bit of a gift registry in the weeks leading up to the Christmas period; if people who are facing serious hardship have a child/children in mind they would be able to provide us with their age and what their interests are or what sort of things would be suitable. That way if we know there’s an 11yo who loves reading we would be able to make the most of buying an eBook reader since we would know it’d be going to someone who will really appreciate it.

      Thanks for the suggestion and for helping me to shape a plan for this, genuinely. I think this is going to make the gifts more meaningful and personalised which is invaluable.