If you’re finished with shopping for nice-but-not-life-changing gifts for the people you care about, how about helping a family you don’t know, who will be grateful to you forever?

Perhaps the most important Heifer International, which provides indigent families worldwide with a cow or other livestock: a reliable source of food for the children and a reliable source of income for the household. Extra milk from a cow, goat or sheep, or eggs from a poultry gift, can be sold at the local market.

You can give the gift in the name of someone else: a double gift, as it were, giving the person who has everything the donation of a food animal to a family that has nothing. This truly meaningful gift will change the lives of a third-world family in need.

Income from the milk or eggs, coupled with the training in sustainable practices that the family receives, allows them to clothe their families, obtain medical care and send the children to school.

It’s not a major commitment: While you can give a goat or sheep, a beehive, chickens, ducks or geese, you can give a “share” in a cow, sheep or other animal for just $10.

Take a look at the options.

It doesn’t have to be a Christmas gift. You can gift through Heifer International year-round. Remember that at Father’s Day, when you’re looking at another tie or set of golf balls.

Check out the options.