It's not just goats, either. Oxfam has sold 9,500 donkeys at 50 pounds ($87) each through its high-street retail shops and its Oxfam Unwrapped Web site, which also offers camels for 95 pounds ($165).
In every instance, there are two recipients — the one who gets a personalized card and picture of "their" animal, and the family somewhere in Africa who gets a valuable head of livestock.
"This year we've sold 22,614 goats, just to be precise," Andrea Stephens of World Vision, the Christian charity that first introduced the "charity goat," told AFP this week as she scrolled through the latest sales data.
"People are looking for something different. They are trying to find unusual ways of buying presents for family and friends and colleagues, particularly those people who are hard to buy for."
World Vision even sells goats in bulk — 91 pounds provided a herd of 13 — along with many other ethical gifts from mosquito nets (five pounds, $8.50) and cleft lip surgery (100 pounds, $173) to a water dam (5,689 pounds, $9,859).
For many gift givers, goats are a more tangible way of donating to charity after a year marked by Biblical-scale catastrophe — including the Asian tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake and extreme poverty and hunger in Africa.
