Stu­dents from Cal­gary are chal­leng­ing oth­ers to give up a Christ­mas gift to help stop poverty. Peo­ple tak­ing up the chal­lenge can reg­is­ter at Uend.org and select a sus­tain­able devel­op­ment project. In fact, this is a pretty good gift idea itself.

From The Edmon­ton Jour­nal, writer Sarah McGin­nis intro­duces us to the four stu­dents start­ing the challenge.

Betty Wang, Der­rick Yick, Sherri Cui and Yiti Wang launched the cam­paign after encoun­ter­ing the UEnd Foun­da­tion at a recent youth summit.

UEnd is a Calgary-based char­ity that helps peo­ple sup­port poverty-ending pro­grams around the world.

The quar­tet of friends, who attend West­ern Canada High School, decided to each ask a loved one to donate to the foun­da­tion in lieu of giv­ing them a present this year.

“Over the Christ­mas sea­son, while we’re sit­ting here enjoy­ing our­selves, there are other peo­ple who really need the help,” said Wang, 16.

“It feels good to be able to start some­thing and help them out.”

Hop­ing to encour­age oth­ers to fol­low their lead, the stu­dents headed to social net­work­ing sites such as Face­book and Twit­ter to help spread the word.

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