Happy Holidays - No Wreaths. More Llamas.
categories: Announcements, Miscellaneous, Stuff I like to talk about
ALPHARETTA - We started a company holiday tradition a few years ago of giving on behalf of our clients to Heifer International. No wreaths from Warmath Real Estate…we give livestock!
I just went back and reread my post from last year regarding our contribution to Heifer International and I must say: I hit the nail on the head.
I don’t think I could write a post more spot on with how I feel than what I wrote last year, so I’m not going to try. Instead, I’m going to reprint it, not because I’m lazy, but because I can’t do any better.
Before I get to that though, a couple of things are different this year, namely the economy. Little did we realize at this time last year what a tough year 2008 would be. And by many forecasts, 2009 is going to be more of the same or possibly worse. The tough times, though, make you realize how good you have it (or had it!).
Charitable giving is one of the first things to get whacked from the budget with the economy turns south and I must admit that it took me a little longer to give this year than last. However, it actually feels better to give in a down economy because you are making a bigger sacrifice yourself.
Second, each year we strive to increase our giving, so the pig from last year can step aside for the llama this year. One day I’d love to give an entire Ark . I take this from the Heifer International website regarding the benefits of receiving a Llama for those of you who wonder what you would do if one of them showed up under your tree:
When resources are scarce, it’s important that livestock don’t use up land reserved for people. At home in rough, mountainous areas of Latin America, llamas are a blessing to families with limited pasture land because they can eat the scrub vegetation that other domesticated animals won’t eat. Llama droppings help fertilize topsoil — improving crops and reducing erosion.
Women weave their llamas’ fleece into warm clothing to wear or sell. They load them up with goods for market and trek with them across rugged slopes at high altitudes. As they travel, llamas’ padded feet don’t damage the fragile terrain and their selective browsing doesn’t destroy sparse vegetation.
Llamas and their kin, the alpaca, provide Heifer families with invaluable sources of transportation, income and wool, which is prized for making blankets, ponchos, carpet and rope.
Llamas are remarkably disease resistant and require little care; they can carry small loads for distances over rugged slopes at high altitudes.
We wish all our friends and clients, past, present and future (even though you don’t know it yet!), the very best and safest holidays regardless of how you celebrate.
We are very thankful for those people who entrusted their home sales and purchases to us this year and we look forward to serving even more of you in the future. This gift to Heifer is to honor you.
Without further ado, here is last year’s post:
We are very thankful for a great 2007 and want to wish all of you, regardless of your religious faith, holiday customs or personal belief system, a joyous end of 2007 and great hope for 2008.
Not only do we appreciate that our real estate business continues to grow from last year, but even more so appreciate that we are able, by choice, happenstance or just shear luck to live in both the United States and Alpharetta.
The United States offers many fine places to live and this post is not the place to debate the merits of one locale over another. I’ll just say that Alpharetta has a lot of things going for it including relatively low property taxes compared to the rest of the country, a growing job base and good business environment and a climate where it rarely snows. You’ll appreciate that if you’re reading this in the mid-west today. But that misses the point.
During this holiday season sometimes we get wrapped up rushing around. I’m as guilty as anyone of this. In fact, December is one of my busiest months of the year for sales so I’m unusally harried. On top of that, I think that most realtors are expected to give their past clients a gift of some sort in appreciatiton. It is supposed to be "good business practice" to stay in touch with your past clients. Real estate is a referral based business after all, or so they say.
In this gift giving area, I tend to take a different path and wanted to take a moment here to reiterate how fortunate we are to live the way we are able to in Alpharetta. Any world-wide social or economic organization like the United Nations, UNICEF or World Bank can provide all sorts of statistics on the relative poverty of the rest of the world compared to how we live in the U.S. and Alpharetta. For instance, half the population of the world lives on LESS than TWO DOLLARS A DAY . That is about $700 a year compared to Alpharetta where the U.S. Census reports we live on about $40,000 a year PER CAPITA. (The U.S. per capita income is half the Alpharetta per capita income, which is one reason we are fortunate to live in Alpharetta. The median HOUSEHOLD income in Alpharetta is almost $100,000 per year almost double the US household income.)
As for literacy, a BILLION people entered the 21st century not able to read or write. In Alpharetta, 95% of us have high school educations (compared to 80% in the U.S.) and 57% have a college degree or higher (compared to 24% nationally.) The world statistic is that 1% has a university degree.
By some reports 80% of the world’s population lives in poverty and 20% of the population is in conditions not befitting a human. In Alpharetta, there are 1,785 people (260 families) below the U.S. poverty level; that is only 5% of Alpharetta’s population but still startles me as unacceptable. (The U.S. poverty rate is 24%).
All this is to say that if you are a client of ours or in any way affiliated with Warmath Real Estate, you won’t be receiving from us a box of chocolates or holiday wreath that is dead on arrival. Instead, we are 
continuing our tradition of giving to Heifer International on behalf of all our clients. Heifer is an organization that helps reduce world-wide hunger by giving livestock in the broadest definition of the term (water buffalo, llamas, chickens, honey bees, goats, pigs, sheep and of course, heifers) to needy recipients. The recipients must, in turn, pass on the gift by giving one of the offspring of their animal to someone else. Heifer’s work creates long-term, environmentally and socially sustainably solutions that I am, one, philosophically aligned with and, two, pleased to continue to support.
It is our pledge to continue to fund Heifer each year in honor of the patronage of our clients. And even if we didn’t sell a single house in a year, we would still give to Heifer!
Our slogan is: "No wreaths, more pigs!" We wish you the very best holiday season and know that you have made someone else’s stomach a little less empty - and that is the best gift to give.
