Do you have examples of what your kids are involved with in the community?

I'm active in the community and my kids tag along, but haven't attached themselves to anything specific yet and I wanted to get them thinking about it this summer.

I'm reading with interest. I've wanted to do regular service projects with my kids, but haven't found anything that grabs me/us/them yet.

Good question, Cym!

Most of the community service activities in which my children participate are through our church. We do a variety of outreach activities in the community such as giving away dinners at Thanksgiving, handing out blankets and lunches to homeless people, and operating a food pantry and clothing closet. My dd often serves the valuable role of translator when we volunteer in community service activities.

As director of our elementary children's ministry, I feel that giving the children an active role in service projects is important. Before Spring Break our kid's raised money to provide Spring Breach lunches for the students at my dd's school who receive free and reduced lunches (over 70% of the student body). The kids did all the advertising by creating flyers and slides and by making the announcements at church. Once all the food was purchased, the children sorted the food into individual bags for distribution. Another church heard about what we were doing and decided to participate in the project. On the day we handed out the food at the school, there was enough for every student at the school with extra left over that was sent to a women's shelter.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart! I actually volunteer for a local non-profit that is dedicated to families volunteering together. I built their website (by hand without development tools, so go easy on me - I only had so much time to dedicate to it and didn't have time to design it as well as I would have liked. I basically just did it exactly how the director wanted it. Aren't I full of excuses??? ). They have a lot of resources and suggestions out there. And if you find any broken links, feel free to let me know. We just did a web site upgrade not too long ago!

http://doinggoodtogether.org

Love the site, kimck! No apologizing preface necessary! It's wonderful.

I have it bookmarked and I'll see what we can come up with to work on. My kids love to draw, so maybe we ought to draw pictures for someone (hospital? nursing home?) and then visit to drop them off. We'll see...

Anyway, thanks for the link.

Yes thanks kimck! I was thinking just earlier today we needed to find some kind of volunteer work to do together as a family. Thank you for posting the website!

My dd8 and I are participating in a program led by National Geographic and the California State parks. We are doing a 24 hour marathon with scientists observing and recording as many plants and animal species as we can at our local mountains.

Thanks, I bookmarked it also to look at in depth later.

How fun, bianca! How did you find out about that? Do they have similar programs in other states?

We are involved with a number of things through church, scouts, and 4-H. On a completely individual level, GS8 has a huge interest in gardening and donates some of the excess produce to food pantries. We also clean up the ditches along our farm several times a year and take the cans to the recycler and give the money to our scout den.

Hi Kriston,

I am not sure if they are doing this in different states. I would assume they would. Here is their website: maybe you can find more info there: nationalgeographic.com/bioblitz or bioblitz@ngs.org

Last Thursday my dd and I were driving to school and we decided to keep driving (I wanted to try homeschooling for a day). We ended up in a small national park and they had information about it there.

Great website, kimck!

Bianc, what a great project! Have fun.

Our middle school has monthly Service Learning Projects. My oldest chose to work on the educational program for our local art museum, researched artists, made an ipod tour and scavenger hunt. My current 7th grader has been reading to young elementary school children in an ESL class. They have choices each year, including river restoration project, therapeutic horseback riding help for disabled children, retirement home visits, elementary school outreach.

Most of what I do is supporting schools, gifted, education. I would like to help each of the boys find something meaningful to them, where they can make a real difference. I love to hear what others are doing!

Thanks, bianca. I'll check it out.

Both kids play instruments during masses and other church events. They are involved in more hands on projects for the homeless/poor through scouting.
One unusual project Ghost did this spring with a friend - a movie about poor in our city and a shelter that is trying to help them. They do hope to screen the movie in that shelter eventually (it is not ready yet to go on DVD).

At which age did you start actively involving your kids in those kinds of activities?

I made a point from even the age of 2 to take my son out shopping for toys for underprivileged kids during the holidays, or letting him help pick out some extra food for the food shelf when we were out grocery shopping. Even very small kids understand that kind of giving, and you can start very simply without a big time commitment.

I think it's important for the child to see the parents doing volunteer work as part of their lives. Then as the child gets bigger and into his own activities it will be natural for him to start doing community service projects.