Tag: give back

Community Service Ideas for Families

On May 20, 2019

Giving back to your city, town, or neighborhood through community service can be both fun and rewarding for the entire family and beneficial to your local community as well. Helping others who are in need, or beautifying or city through community service work as a family can also strengthen bonds between parents and siblings. Community service also makes you feel better about yourself through the joy of giving. If you’re considering community service for you and your family, here are 6 ideas that will make your family happier and stronger and your community a better place live.

Give food, serve food

Donating food to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen is a great way to help others in need, but serving food to the homeless in addition to donating food is a great way for families to bond as a unit and it can help foster an attitude of gratefulness in young adults and children.

Assist senior citizens

Assist seniors with household tasks such as mowing the lawn, painting, and household chores. Many seniors have a lot of wisdom, and life experiences to share which can be beneficial to you and your family and entertaining as well.

Clean up a park

Get together as a family and clean up your favorite park by picking up trash. You can make the experience even more memorable by having a family picnic after your service work is complete.

Plant trees and flowers

Find areas around your neighborhood that could use a little sprucing up and plant trees or flowers. Visit your local home improvement store as a family to select the type of flowers, plants, or trees you would like to plant. Planting as a family not only allows you the opportunity to beautify your neighborhood, it provides an educational opportunity for you and your family to learn about plants and growing.

Volunteer to help animals in need

Visit your local animal shelter and volunteer to clean up kennels and cages and feed homeless cats and dogs. Children love animals. Helping animals in need of love and attention is a great way for families to grow closer while helping the local community.

Organize a Christmas toy drive

Everyone loves receiving gifts at Christmas time. Organizing a Christmas toy drive with your family is a good way to teach children about the joys of giving and helping children who are less fortunate. Collect new toys around your neighborhood or take donations to buy toys, and donate them to your local shelter or to families in need.

How to Build a Mindset of Inclusion

By Jerry Swon

On June 8, 2018

In Community

Funding a cause can stretch across the global landscape, from arts to science to humanities and everything in between. Philanthropic work touches a variety of lives in a myriad of ways; it’s one of the unique blessings of grant funding in the first place.

One of those groups that are most often touched, but sometimes forgotten, are people with disabilities. Nearly 20% of people in the United States have at least some disability, whether a physical handicap that is evidenced by things such as a wheelchair, or a hidden disability like anxiety or depression. What’s more is that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is a whopping 64%.

The statistics are in, and people with a disability feel more ostracized and stigmatized than ever. Part of the job of being a funder is not only to provide the means by which the world can grow but that people who may feel disenchanted by others can be included as well.

Here are a few ways they can do precisely that:

Encourage Organizations to Adapt. Although funders are not explicitly in charge of the organizations that they support, they still hold a considerable amount of influence on the operations that the entity partakes in. By encouraging – or, to take it a step further and mandating it as a condition of the grant – organizations to make themselves more accessible by providing ramps or socially-safe activities, they can influence a group to become more inclusive.

Communicate Accessibility. One of the struggles that many people with disabilities face is who to contact in case they need to make special accommodations. Provide a number or contact information on all event or program materials that will get people in contact with the proper people. Furthermore, communicate on your material loudly that this organization is striving to be inclusive: anticipate activities or accommodations that people might suggest and describe them in detail.

Prioritize Inclusion. Alongside the central goal of an organization – whether that goal is to spread education, combat poverty, or something else – the funder and the group need to prioritize inclusion among their own ranks. Actively recruit people with disabilities and value them for their vital contribution to their time. Once a group begins to break down the walls that divide us as humans, everything else falls into place.

Lending a Hand While Learning a Lesson

By Jerry Swon

On April 18, 2018

In Community, Volunteer

Life is not limited to what we gain, but what we give. More often than not, we get wrapped up in ourselves. We become self-centered, and sometimes we even think the world revolves around us. Lending a hand to your community gives you a jolt of reality. It helps you realize that you are not the only person that matters. When volunteering you not only are helping someone else out but are learning valuable lessons.

Volunteering Broadens Your Perspective

As mentioned before, we can often get wrapped up in ourselves. Our problems, our disappointments, they may seem like the absolute worse at the time. Sometimes it may even feel like the end of the world.

But, when you take a moment to reflect on the lives of others who are living with more significant problems, like homelessness or poverty, your perspective changes. It becomes easier to see your own life in a different light, and you have a lot more to be thankful for. Suddenly, those “big” problems, don’t seem to be that big anymore.

Even Small Changes Can Have an Impact

You don’t have to take on a big project like building a house, every single time that you volunteer. Like big projects, small projects can also offer an impact. Donating clothes, pulling weeds, or even walking an elderly neighbors dog may not seem like they would produce much of an effect, but even these little actions make all the difference.

Donating your old clothes can help someone keep warm. Pulling weeds improves the appearance of the community. Walking an elderly neighbors dog helps give “Fido” the proper exercise that he needs that his owner may not be able to provide. All of these actions produce meaningful reactions. The list of community service projects you can do is endless, and no matter the size they all create an impact.

We all have our own Narrative.

We all come from different backgrounds, with all different stories that describe who and why we are the person we are. As you volunteer, you will meet people from all walks of life. Your volunteer experience can be more fulfilling, by understanding the narratives of others. Not only that, but you become more compassionate and empathetic.

The stories of others help us to understand that all of us, no matter race, size, class, can experience hardships. We all need a little help sometimes that is why it is so important to create a community that is continually supporting each other.

These are only three lessons that volunteering in your community can help you learn. No matter how you volunteer, the experience will shape you immensely, and you will gain the satisfaction knowing that you made a difference in someone’s life.