Even those of us with the best of gift giving intentions often find ourselves settling for giving store-bought “stuff” that the recipient doesn’t really need, and that  will probably end up in a landfill someday. To help you avoid this trap, we’ve created a multi-part guide to holiday gifts that can help, rather than hurt, our environment and local communities and economies.

This first installment explores options for donation-based giving. This is a perfect option for the “person who has everything”—which, when you think about it, may cover most people on your list. It’s always a good idea to consider causes and organizations that are meaningful to the recipient (and to you, of course).

Here are some ideas to get started:

• Rather than buying the latest bestseller for your book-loving uncle, why not donate a book to your local library in his name? Check out this Adopt-A-Book program at the Brooklyn Public Library.
• Have fond childhood memories of going to the Queens Museum with your mom? Support the museum by buying her “real estate” on their famed Panorama of the City of New York.
• For the teacher on your list, consider donating to a high-need classroom through DonorsChoose.org.
• Help a recent college graduate invest in someone else’s education by  giving a gift certificate to Vittana—an organization that gives microfinance loans to students around the world.
• Want to teach a child about giving? Donate a goat (or a pig, or a flock of ducks!) in their honor through Heifer International and give them this sweet book to teach them about the difference that the animal can make in the life of a child in the developing world.
• Still unsure about which organization to choose? Charity Navigator offers the Good Card, which lets the recipient give your donation to the charity of their choice.

What are your favorite donation-based gifts? Do you know of any local organizations that are offering a creative way to give this holiday season?

Today is a sad day. It’s my last chance to pick up my box full of vegetables from the Sunnyside CSA (community supported agriculture) program. Every week since June, we’ve gotten a delivery of fresh produce right to the neighborhood from Golden Earthworm Organic Farm on Long Island.

I joined because I wanted to support the local, organic food movement, challenge myself to cook more, and get involved in something in my neighborhood.

Here are some things I realized during my first CSA season:

• Beets are glorious. Rhubarb is delightfully tangy. Yellow cherry tomatoes are possibly even better than red ones. Lettuce is overrated. Kohlrabi is a fancy name for broccoli stem. Purslane and celeriac… exist.
• Not choosing my own food is oddly liberating. When forced to find a way to use things I would never normally buy—like kale, turnips, leeks, escarole, and rutabaga—I discovered new flavors and acquired new cooking skills.
• Though the produce is considered “local,” the farm is kind of far away. It’s way out east on Long Island, almost a two-hour drive from our neighborhood. If that seems far, what about all the produce I would normally get from Florida, California, Chile, Ecuador? While we New Yorkers might reduce our carbon footprint by walking instead of driving to the store, we tend to ignore the environmental costs of shipping all of our food and other goods.
• What is there to eat during the winter? Should I amass a pile of potatoes and squash and canned applesauce and pick off of that all season? Realistically, I’m sure I’ll still buy some oranges from Florida and mac and cheese from a box. But at least I will let my new-found knowledge sway me towards more seasonally and regionally appropriate dishes.
• Now I’m even more motivated to start an indoor composting system, learn to make more things from scratch, and grow some of my own food. Bring it on!

For information about all 80 neighborhood CSAs in NYC, check out Just Food’s website.

News from the past week:

• Radio Rookies 10 Year Anniversary: Where Are They Now? (WNYC)
• Mapping Main Street: Flushing, Queens (Urban Omnibus)
• Answers About Community Philanthropy (City Room)
• Service Announcements Serve Cycling Rules With Humor (City Room)
• Artful way of dealing with graffiti (Queens Courier)
• Fast Bus-Only Lanes Headed To 1st And 2nd Avenues (Gothamist)
• More kosher soup kitchens aiding the newly poor as recession impact deepens (Jewish Week via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Thanksgiving volunteering (Time Out New York)

This week is the first ever NYC Independent Bookstore Week. It’s a great time to pay a visit to your friendly neighborhood bookstore, or to discover new ones around the city. Coordinated by the Independent Booksellers of NYC, the week includes dozens of author readings, signings, and other exciting events including:

• “State by State” reading and “Neighborhood by Neighborhood” essay contest at WORD in Greenpoint
• Jonathan Safran Foer reads from “Eating Animals” at Community Bookstore in Park Slope
• Fall Picture Book Parade at Books of Wonder in Manhattan
• Even a photo scavenger hunt for the adventurous!

Check out the full schedule to get your literary on, and support local businesses this week!

MOUSE Squad is a program that provides training and support for middle and high school students to run computer help desks at their schools. In addition to a technical curriculum, students also receive training in career readiness, problem-solving, literacy, job etiquette, and teamwork. Sounds like the schools themselves also benefit from having a team of trained student technicians on hand to troubleshoot computer problems.

88 NYC students attended the last MOUSE Team Training event on November 7, where they participated in workshops, dismantled and reassembled a computer, and delved into HTML code. There’s no doubt these are going to be important skills for these students after they graduate, so it’s good to know this program is out there.

The next MOUSE event is a digital editing and remixing workshop that will be held on November 18.

Teachers and students: To bring the program to your school, sign up to attend an info session.

It’s that time of year again! From now until November 22 at the World Financial Center, you can ooh and ahh at sculptures made entirely out of full cans of food. It’s all part of a friendly competition called Canstruction, in which all of the building materials will be donated to City Harvest.

When visiting, bring an extra can of food to donate. But avoid sardines and tuna—those look like popular shapes for construction.

News from the past week:

• Jericho’s walls will house returning vets (Daily News)
• On Holiday, Considering the Plight of Homeless Veterans (City Room)
• Two Harlem Streets Named for Civil Rights Leaders (City Room)
• Art Show Shines Light on Sex Trafficking’s Victims (City Room)
• One endpoint of the NYC waste stream (Freshkills Park Blog)
• High Line-inspired projects (Freshkills Park Blog)
• Hate crime collision (Indypendent via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Two-Year Colleges, Swamped, No Longer Welcome All (New York Times)
• Cuts to After-School Programming Draws Protest (Mount Hope Monitor)
• Students Transform Senior Center Garden (Mount Hope Monitor)
• Band of Bicycles (The Leaflet)
• UWNYC Launches BoardServeNYC (New York Nonprofit Press)

Solar energy can reduce electricity costs and your impact on the environment, but the initial investment can be huge, and the technology and installation process can be confusing. That’s why One Block Off the Grid (1BOG) is trying to make the transition to solar both cheaper and easier.

With the 1BOG model, residents of the same city can team up to get group discounts on photovoltaic equipment. They receive guidance on which technology to use and who to hire to install the systems in their homes. Simply knowing that hundreds of other members of your community are going through the same thing probably helps a lot too!

1BOG is focusing on a few cities at a time, and they haven’t quite made it to the east coast yet, but Brooklyn is on the list of future solar cities! Unfortunately, it’ll mostly only apply to homeowners, not renters. But if you’re buddies with your landlord, it could be worth a try.

News from the past week:

• NYC Students Rally Together (NYC Private Schools Blog)
• Groups Urge Opening of Vacant Condos to the Poor (City Room)
• ‘Suspects’ Talk Back: Muslims Complain to FBI (City Limits)
• Poverty Fighters Get Their Own Consultancy (City Limits)
• Helping Spin Gold From a Pile of Garbage (New York Times)
• U.N. Special Rapporteur on housing comes to Harlem (Amsterdam News via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Jamaica Consulate in NY: Organizing a community, tapping into the Diaspora through high-technology (Carib News via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Rally held to demand passage of Student Safety Act (Weekly Thikana via Voices That Must Be Heard)
• Cool Hunting Video Presents: Window Farms (Cool Hunting)

I am officially fixated on The Fixers Collective. This is one of the most interesting mission statements I’ve ever read:

The Fixers Collective is a social experiment in improvisational fixing and mending. Our goal is to increase material literacy in our community by fostering an ethic of creative caring toward the objects in our lives. The Fixers Collective seeks to displace cultural patterns that alienate us from our things, by collectively learning the skills and patience necessary to care for them. Intentionally aligning itself with forces generated in reaction to the current economic crisis, the Fixers Collective promotes a counter-ethos that values functionality, simplicity, and ingenuity and that respects age, persistence and adequacy. The Collective also encourages participants to take liberties with designated forms and purposes, resulting in mended objects that may exist both as art and within a more limited, utilitarian context.

The project grew out of an exhibition at a gallery and reading room called Proteus Gowanus, and meets on Thursdays from 6:00 to 9:00p.m. If you have an item that needs fixing, fill out a form in advance of the session (“Which aspect is broken? Guess 1. Guess 2.”).

If nothing in your life is broken (Hmmm…I wonder if they fix broken hearts?), you can become a Fixers Apprentice and be a part of the solution! And if the knowledge itself isn’t enough for you, perhaps the Fixers Apprentice Badge will be motivating.

The emphasis on mending and re-purposing objects appeals to the environmentalist in me, while the collective brainstorming appeals to the team player in me.

Hat tip: Brooklyn Based