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Give Back this Winter

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at York U chapter.

With the cool breeze starting to enter our air, it can only mean one thing: winter is coming. Now we might not enjoy winter because of the freezing cold. But people like us at least have jackets and warm clothing to help relieve a bit of the cold. What about those who have no food, shelter or warm clothing for the winter? Those are the people we need to take into account before we complain about the cold weather every year.

Here are a few things you can do to help make someone’s holidays a little bit happier this winter:

Donate your old clothes

Every year my family and I clean out our closets near the holiday season and donate as much clothes as we can. This way we get to donate all the clothes we aren’t wearing to help people who cannot afford clothing. We also go ahead and donate one winter item so we can help just a few people be ready for the upcoming winter.

We all have that one top that we never wear anymore, so why keep it? Why not give it away to someone who could wear and love it as much as we once did? It’s simple to help someone this winter and it starts with the clothes you already own.

Source: Matthew Henry

Donate some food

When going to grocery stores and stocking up on food for yourself, why not skip that bag of cookies and buy a few cans of bean to donate to the less fortunate? Many grocery stores these days (Sobeys, Fortinos, etc.) have a bin where you can buy a ready-packaged bag of food and donate it. Or you can simply buy a food item and donate that.

Why should we splurge on extravagant things when we can help someone else? This is not to say you shouldn’t spend some money on yourself, but also that you must think of others who do not have the same privileges as you.

Donate Money

Source: Fabian Blank

It’s one thing to donate food and clothing. It’s another to donate money to those who are ill and require medical treatment. There are many people who are ill and need treatment. Even though our health care system is free, we need to make donations to enhance the technology in our hospitals. If everyone can just donate a few dollars every year to a hospital, it can progress our treatment methods at a much faster pace.

Save a life this winter. Instead of complaining about the cold and everything wrong with winter, try to make someone else’s winter more bearable. Every little thing you do to help counts towards making someone just that much happier this holiday season.

Just your average girl writing about some above average content 
Sam is a Cinema & Media Studies student at York University. She is passionate about LGBTQ+ issues, mental health, and intersectional feminism. She loves dogs and grilled cheese and knows way too much about pop culture.