Your kids can make an impact on your community, too

If you are passionate aboutcommunity service, you definitely want your kids to grow up valuing what you value. Chances are, if you care deeply about helping those in need, someone influential in your life paved the way for you to have a heart for community service. You can be that influential role model for your own kids, leading the way and getting them plugged in by providing opportunities to serve in your community. 

Even if you have younger kids, you can still introduce them to the value of being kind to others by engaging in community service. 

For younger kids, community service may not look the way it would for teens and young adults – you might not want to volunteer your nine-year-old to work in a soup kitchen – but there are still plenty of creative ways that you can encourage your younger kids to make a big difference.

In this article, we’ll cover some of the best ways to get your kids involved in helping to make your community a better place. All of these ideas for community service can be initiated by you without the need to go through an organization like a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. 

When you have younger kids, it’s often a great idea to actively engage in community service projects with them on a smaller scale. We’ll give you some easy-to-execute ideas that even the youngest kids can participate in. 

Teach your kids the value of keeping your city clean.

One of the easiestcommunity service projects to do with your kids, no matter their age, is picking up litter. If you have trash-heavy areas in your town or city, it’s a great idea to head to them with trash pickup supplies and start making a dent in the mess.

Teaching your kids not to litter, and that it’s a kind idea to clear out trash left by others, is a valuable lesson that is best learned through experience. 

All you need to get started is a trash-covered spot in the place you live (this should be easy enough to find) and some garbage pickup gear. Your trash collection apparatus can be as simple as a pointy stick, but it's helpful to bring rakes, shovels and other helpful tools along with you. 

Trash pickup also provides you with an opportunity to teach your kids the importance of handling potentially germy objects with care. It’s always wise to bring gloves, hand sanitizer, and other protective measures with you and to instruct your kids in how to engage in their litter cleanup efforts in the safest way possible.

Participate in a for-charity bake sale with your kids. 

If you’re reading this post around the time it was published, you know that holding organized events is a bit tricky right now. The importance of social distancing to keep everyone healthy and safe has made it difficult to hold events like bake sales at the moment. However, the hope is that there will soon be a time when big charity events will soon be possible. 

When that time comes, a perfect way to get your kids started with community service and helping those in need is to organize a neighborhood bake sale where all the profits are donated towards feeding the hungry and homeless in your town or city. 

Getting hands-on and helping out in the kitchen is something many kids love, making this a fun and meaningful opportunity for them to help make a difference in your community. 

When you are looking for community service opportunities that your kids can participate in, look for something that you can do in your home while supervising and guiding your kids. 

Baking for charity with your kids kills two birds with one stone (pardon the metaphor – St. Francis would be disappointed) by giving your kids an opportunity to learn some valuable culinary skills and giving them a practical way to support the needy. 

If you have very young kids, it can often be tough to supervise them in the kitchen without things erupting into full-fledged chaos. If you’ve ever had to pull your toddler son or daughter’s sticky hands out of a freshly-mixed bowl of homemade cookie dough, you know the struggle. 

Your kids mean well, but when they’re little they might not know how to help with something as involved as baking. This is a great opportunity to work with grade school-age kids on a community service project, but it is one that is probably best saved for that age and older.

Have your kids complete chores for charity money.

When you are working on teaching your kids the value of giving to those in need, a great way to get them started is by giving them work to do around the house, then splitting their earnings into money for them and money to donate. 

If you give your kids an allowance as payment for their contribution to daily household duties, you can teach them the value of giving by letting them have the freedom to choose a local charity to donate a portion of their allowance to. 

If you are not already giving your kids an allowance but have the means to, it’s a great idea to introduce the idea of a partial donation early on rather than later.

Creating a donatable portion of your kids’ allowances is a fantastic way to introduce them to local charities and give them a sense of ownership of their money. 

Let your kids know that the money they have earned is theirs, but that it is important to give a portion of it to those who do not have the same privileges that they do. Teaching your kids this lesson helps them to understand the importance of kindness and generosity in terms that they can comprehend even from a young age. 

When explaining the importance of community service and generosity to your kids, it’s important to meet them where they are. 

Depending on their ages, they may not yet be able to understand the reality that not everyone has the same quality of life that they do, nor that many kids do not know where their next meal will come from. You don’t have to guilt-trip your kids into giving to the needy, but it is important to explain to them in terms that they can understand that they are in a position of responsibility to help others who are less fortunate.

 Teach your kids that even something as apparently simple as three meals a day is a gift, not a given. 

How Nunbelievable Can Help Your Family Give to the Needy

By baking delicious cookies and sharing them with you, Nunbelievable hopes to get you and your family more plugged in with community service, even while you have dessert. 

By sharing aNunbelievable cookie with your kids, you can teach them the value of giving to those in need. This lays the groundwork for a tasty lesson that you can teach your kids.

Each Nunbelievable cookie you share with your family translates to one meal donated to someone who would otherwise go hungry. 

Next time you have dessert as a family, break a Nunbelievable cookie into pieces and share them with your kids. Let them know that there are people living close bywho can’t even have dinner, let alone dessert. 

Tell them you are not trying to make them feel guilty or ruin dessert, and that that isn’t the end of the story. Tell them that because of the cookie you’re sharing with them, someone gets to have a meal, and that there are other ways they can make an effort tofight hunger.

One of the most important lessons you can teach your kids is that they are not too small to make a big difference.The fight to end hunger needs all hands on deck, including little ones. 

Teach your kids to appreciate what they have and to share generously with others, and they will grow up to appreciate what they have more and more. You don’t have to be a grown-up to change someone’s life for the better. 

Your kids may feel too small to make a difference in the lives of others, and it’s up to you to let them know that’s not true. One of the best ways to show them how much of an impact they can make is to get them out in the community helping out where it’s most needed!

Sources:

https://www.familyeducation.com/family-life/community-service-ideas-kids-all-ages-holiday-season-beyond

https://kidactivities.net/community-service-ideas-for-kids-all-ages/

https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america