Organizations doing good work for disenfranchised, sick, homeless, and hungry people are worthy of our thanks and our generosity through a partnership defined by our desire to help. Thanksgiving/Christmas is typically the time of year when folks start thinking about this and giving increases.

If you’re thinking about making a donation to help, but you don’t know which organization to which to give the help, here is a list of several organizations doing legitimate, often sacrificial, kindness to others.

I found out about Heifer International several years ago when a Kiwanis friend of mine talked about his volunteering for them. (He was a dairy consultant and helped ranchers to give the right feed mixtures to their cattle.) Heifer does great work giving livestock to people in Third World countries in order to give them a way to sustain their lives and productivity.

Bread for the World is a favorite of Rick Steves, travel expert and guide. Bread advocates for the world’s hungry and help mobilize faith communities to lend their weight to the cause of world hunger. According to the UN, approximately 793 million people are starving around the world,. That makes up about 11 percent of the population. Of the 793 million, more than 100 million suffer from severe malnutrition and risk starving to death.

Oxfam is an organization devoted to issues of inequality in order to solve the problems of hunger and poverty. There is also an International version of this website.

Living Water digs wells around the world in order to provide clean drinking water to impoverished peoples. Water is the most vital requirement for human beings, without which humans can’t live.

Habitat for Humanity builds houses for people to live in, but it does so by involving house recipients in the construction of their own home. Not only that, recipients of a home are required to help someone else get a home by volunteering time in that construction. This encourages self-reliance as well as teaches some important life skills.

Amnesty International is an organization that is devoted to global human rights – “no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world’s largest grassroots human rights organization.”

These are just a sample of all the organizations in the world that are doing incredible human good. But they always need new people to sign up and say, “we want to help.”

That could be you.