A while back, the folks at Project7 reached out to me to talk about their great charity.  ”Project 7″ produces “products for good” are directs them to one of seven charitable missions, including:

• Heal the Sick
• Save the Earth
• House the Homeless
• Feed the Hungry
• Quench the Thirsty
• Teach them Well
• Hope for Peace

Overall, I highly recommend these products. If you happen to see a tube sitting at the checkout counter of your local Walmart, be sure to pick one up and you’ll be doing a world of good. If you like the mints, you can also order a bulk package from Amazon.

One of the easiest ways to give to charity is to visit TheHungerSite.com and click on the bright yellow button on the home page button. Every time someone clicks, it helps bring cups of food to families in need in the U.S. and abroad. How do they do it? It’s pretty simple: after you click the button you get brought to a page full of ads of the companies sponsoring the button. More than 779 million cups of food have been donated through TheHungerSite.com since its inception in 1999.

One relatively new feature of The Hunger site is the inclusion of eco-friendly apparel and gifts from local producers around the world, from the Philippines to India to Nepal. These are items you won’t find at your local department store–they’re truly unique items from around the globe which are not only fashionable, they also help sustain the local areas where they’re being produced, plus a potion of each purchase will go to charity.

Here are some hot items for the fall:

• One-of-a-kind document pouches, $9.95. Made from recycled juice boxes by the Filipino artisans of Preda, as part of an ongoing effort to reduce rural poverty. This back-to-school purchase helps keep Filipino students in school and off the streets, by providing an income for women and children.
• 100% organic cotton long-sleeve tee shirts, $20. The popular scoop necked tee, in a range of colors, is crafted at a non-profit employment center in the Tamil Nadu region of India.  Tee-shirt production also supports 300 small organic farmers in the Maharashtar area.
• Linen wrap sweater, $34.95. Made in India out of 100% bamboo fiber.  An easy-to-use versatile garment, available in multiple colors, the linen wrap is an example of sustainable apparel production. Bamboo grass can grow a yard or more in a day, can be harvested without re-planting, and its shoots absorb greenhouse gases and clean the environment.
• Organic Cotton Tee, with Earth Heart design, $24.95: From Peru, made with 100% organic cotton and low-impact dies.
• Rainbow Tunic, $24.95: 100% cotton, hand-embroidered with a rainbow of colors. Made in India.

The Hunger Site helps a number of charities, including Mercy Corps, Millennium Promise, Ozarks Food Harvest, The Mississippi Food Network, Tennessee’s Mid-South Food Bank, and Alabama’s Bay Area Food Bank (AL), Feeding America, and Millennium Promise.

If you need to touch up any part of your car, one of the toughest things to do is to match the car paint color. If you go to any random body shop, chances are you’ll get a shade that’s not quite a match.

Popular and long-time automotive paint company Dupli-Color has set up a paint color finder tool at Facebook.com/Duplicolor or on FindYourColorHelpAnother.com. By simply finding information about your vehicle’s paint color and entering it online before the end of this year, you can help raise over $50,000 to help The Meals On Wheels Association of America.

Another $1 will be donated to MOWAA every time someone purchases Scratch Fix 2 in 1 Premium Touch-Up Paint after entering their Vechile Paint Color Code. It’s a quick and simple way to help the hungry.

Every now and then, Groupon presents a neat variation of their half-price deals which helps charity. From now until the end of the day tomorrow (Thursday July 21), Groupon has a page set up to help the World Food Program, the United Nations frontline agency mandated to help the one in seven people on earth afflicted with global hunger.

Specifically, your donation on this page will help support and bring much-needed cooking stoves to families living in Darfur, a region that is wracked with hunger, poverty and conflict. Unlike other charities, you’re not asked to doanted hundreds of dollars here. All it takes is $3. That’s less than a cup of coffee (or about a third of a cup of coffee at Starbucks!)

World Food and Groupon are depending on the power of bulk buying. For all donations up to $100,000, an anonymous donor is matching it.

The money will go to buy stoves for people in Darfur who have been displaced due to the horrific situation there. Why stoves? In Darfur, women often have to walk long distances to find firewood to cook for their families. Sadly, the lawlessness in these areas results in many women getting raped and killed, just for trying to provide for their families.

These stoves burn firewood more efficiently and burn more cleanly. Thus, women need to gather wood less frequently. The World Food Program will also provide training to women on how to make and sell the stoves, providing them a much-needed chance at hope for the future.

Just reading the news release from the World Food Program was incredibly disturbing to me, as I’m sure as it was to you. While times are tough, chances are you won’t really miss $3. But for those suffering in Darfur, even that small amount can make a world of difference.

Remember the old days when you wanted to be the kid in elementary school with the coolest lunch box? You can relive those days when you arrive to work with your very own Mario Batali Ditali Commuter Bag Insulated Lunch Tote.

This is a fashionable “lunch box” which you can bring to your workplace every day. Aside from saving money and being good to the environment by not wasting brown bags, this stylish bag will keep your homemade lunch fresh and tasty. It’s made of high density nylon which is extremely durable. It has two compartments, one which is not insulated (to carry utensils and non-perishable items) and one which is insulated to keep your food warm (or cold). The bag even has organizer pockets for you to put things like cell phones or PDAs, as well as an adjustable shoulder strap.

Some of the proceeds will go to The Lunch Box Auction Fund, a cause Mario Batali supports to feed children-in-need and give them opportunities to learn and grow.

If the crops in your outdoor garden are a bit anemic, the Fox Farm Soil Nutrient Trio will bring them back to greatness.

Soil can lose its nutrients after years of having crops grow in it, or it may naturally be low or unbalanced in nutrients. With these three bottles, you’ll enjoy  denser growth of vegetables, larger blooms, and better tasting fruits and vegetables.  Fox Farms Big Bloom, Grow Big, and Tiger Bloom all come in one convenient package, providing top  quality nutrition for plants in soil gardens.

A portion of the proceeds benefits the Hydro for Hunger initiative.

NEW for 2011! While the original FEED Bag is no longer available from Amazon.com, you can get a much, much more stylish and comfortable Blue Denim Bucket Tote or White Canvas Tote from the Gap.

Two years ago on Thanksgiving Day 2007, the World Food Programme introduced the FEED Bag, an ingenious idea where purchasing a bag (which could be used for eco-friendly shopping) would feed a hungry child for an entire year.

In the last two years, over 40,000 children have been fed thanks to the generous support of people buying this bag. There have been many imitators, but none could match the original. This year, get or send another FEED bag and keep the food going to the most needy in the world. To get yours, visit our original post back in November 2007.

If you haven’t heard about freerice.com, you’re in for a treat.

While this isn’t a “gift giving” item, it is a great way to help out a good cause. Here’s how the site works: you’ll be shown a vocabulary word. Just pick the right definition, and 10 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations World Food Program.

Is this for real? Yes. The site is run by the United Nations World Food Program and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. It’s paid for by sponsors whose ads you’ll see across the bottom of the screen.

Click on a couple words, and you can learn some vocabulary while helping feed the hungry. There are few better ways to kill time!

The Henckels 8-pc. Stainless Steak Knife Set with Wood Case
 is one of the best-selling steak knife gift kits on Cooking.Com.

Henckels is one of the world’s premier manufacturers of knives. These knives are made of high-carbon stainless steel. The handles are countoured and have been polished to a dramatic shine. The edges of the knives are serrated for precise cutting, and are stamped to show that they are authentic Henckels products.

The knives come in a beautiful rosewood presentation box. It makes a great gift for someone with exquisite taste in steaks–and in knives. And a portion of every gift set sold will be donated to the Share Our Strength (SOS) Anti Hunger Program.

NEW for 2011! While the original FEED Bag is no longer available from Amazon.com, you can get a much, much more stylish and comfortable Denim Bucket Tote or Canvas Tote from the Gap.

Here is a great idea from Lauren Bush and Amazon.Com just in time for your holiday shopping.

Starting on Thanksgiving Day 2007, you can order a charity shopping bag, the World Food Programme FEED Bag on Amazon.Com. For less than the price that most people pay for Thanksgiving dinner, you can feed a hungry child for a full year.

Reusable cloth shopping bags have become a huge trend–and a fashion craze–in the past few months. Designers like Stella McCartney and Hermes have sold bags for hundreds of dollars.

Taking a cue from this trend, UN World Food Program honorary spokesperson Lauren Bush came up with the idea of selling these charity shopping bags. The bags are sturdy, made of natural burlap and cotton. They are also stylish–the bag is a reversable design: one side looks like the kind of burlap bags that the UN uses to deliver food to children around the world; the other is a stylish white bag you can coordinate with any outfit.

Most importantly, they are a great way to show you care, and a great conversation starter about this critically important topic. Last year, the UN World Food Program charity fed 16 million children at schools. But there is a long way to go. The UN estimates that there are 300 million children around the world who routinely go hungry.

By buying this bag, you will be providing one child with enough food for one school year. By using the bag for your shopping, you will also be helping the environment by reducing the number of plastic bags. It’s not often that $59.95 goes so far.