Stumped on holiday gift ideas?

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Compiling gift Christmas cards for the Alternative Gift Shop are Falk School students, from left, Clara Stuligross, 14, eighth grade; Jessica Kurs-Lasky, 13, eighth grade; Eric and Scott Stern, both 12, seventh grade; and Jodi Lincoln, 13, eighth grade. Click photo for larger image.

Instead of buying Uncle Pete another pair of socks or getting the baby sitter Eat'n Park Smiley Bucks, give a gift that does some good, such as meals for seniors or sleeping bags for the homeless.

Through the Alternative Gift Shop and the Alternative Marketplace of Pittsburgh, some Falk middle school students and the First Unitarian Church in Shadyside, respectively, have been giving people ways to buy heart-warming, feel-good alternative gifts this holiday season.

"Instead of physical gifts, people can purchase gifts that will benefit someone in the community," says Dr. Kim Lincoln, a retired physician turned full-time mom who is coordinating the alternative gift program run by about 22 middle school students at Falk School in Oakland.

Alternative gift recipients receive a greeting card describing the gift purchased in their honor and information about the agency they're helping.

So, for example, Uncle Pete could receive a card that reads, "A gift of two meals at the East End Cooperative Ministry soup kitchen has been given in your honor."

The gifts range in price from $3 for the above mentioned two soup kitchen meals, to $20 for an HIV test or a week's worth of Meals on Wheels for a senior citizen, to $25 for a cold-weather sleeping bag for a homeless person. (Click here for a complete list of gifts and prices.)

The gift money is collected and given to the agency to use for the specified purpose.

Dr. Lincoln, 43, of Squirrel Hill, proposed the alternative gift program last year to help students at Falk "gain an understanding of the needs out there and how there are many people in our community that have so little," she said.

She also tried to pick local agencies that students could do follow-up volunteer work with after the holiday season.

The Falk School youngsters sold $5,000 worth of such gifts last Christmas and already have sold more than $4,400 in alternative gifts this year to students, friends and families of Falk.

"It's helping other people get things that they don't have, and I think it's a great gift," says Clara Stuligross, 14, an eighth-grader at Falk, a K-8 private school affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh.

"We're all very privileged when it comes down to it," says Scott Stern, 12, a Falk seventh-grader. "It was like every family at Falk was doing this. It was amazing."

In the past, students had sent money to tsunami victims and people in Darfur and Afghanistan, he says.

"Our basic goal [with this program] is to help people in our own area," Scott says. "It's a very fun thing to do."

His twin brother, Eric, agrees.

"By working on this, in some small way I'm helping someone who really needs to be helped, and that makes me feel on top of the world," Eric says. "It also makes me feel I'm a part of something bigger than just a basketball team or a club, something really universal."

Cindy Kates, a churchmate of Dr. Lincoln, expanded the program -- a smaller and more local version of Alternative Gifts International or the Heifer Project -- to their church. At the First Unitarian Church, it's called the Alternative Marketplace of Pittsburgh program, and they have already raised about $2,500.

"The church was a natural for this because so much of the Unitarian concept is based on social service and community," says Ms. Kates, 50, of Highland Park. "We're offering alternative gifts that are focused on Pittsburgh needs."

Alternative gifts aren't just good for the community; they also don't add to personal clutter.

"It seems as though we spend the first half of our lives collecting things and the second half of our lives getting rid of them," she says with a laugh. "Rather than owning stuff, it starts to own you. As a society, we need to embrace the concept of doing with less."

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If you're interested in purchasing an Alternative Gift Shop/Alternative Marketplace gift, call Ms. Kates at 412-661-0726, e-mail alternative.marketplace.pittsburgh @hotmail.com or visit the First Unitarian Church, at the corner of Morewood and Ellsworth avenues in Shadyside, Sunday between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.