Summer Activities

Charitable Child has a lot planned this summer. We are currently holding a book drive to provide books to a learning cottage at a trailer park off of Jefferson Davis Highway in Chesterfield. On July 21st we are hosting a LemonAid Stand to raise funds to fight childhood cancer. And in August we are doing a school supply drive and putting together backpacks for kids in Chesterfield who cannot afford school supplies. Here is a link to our current Sign Up Genius for anyone who wants to get involved: http://www.SignUpGenius.com/go/60B0A4CAFAF2E5-summer

Living The Life

“The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others.”  -Gandhi

When I was younger I would walk past nice homes and imagine myself and my future family living there, browse expensive furniture stores and dream of the day that I could afford to actually buy something, and envision the high-paying jobs I might be able to get as an adult.  As I have gotten older, and to the time in my life that I can have the big house, expensive furniture and power job, I have finally realized that none of that stuff is very important after all.

For the most part I have achieved what the young me wanted.  I am a lawyer and have a beautiful family, a comfortable house in a desirable neighborhood, and the name brand sofa.  It was when I had achieved all of that and still didn’t feel like it was enough to keep me happy that I began doing some soul searching.

It would seem that I had it all, so what was missing?  Finally I realized that I had grown up active in volunteer service and, between work, kids, and keeping up with a house, volunteering had not had a place in my life in several years.  It dawned on me that not only did I need to give back by volunteering, but that I would not be doing my job as a parent if I didn’t teach my kids about the importance of charity and volunteering.

It is amazing how much people, and especially children, can grow by serving others. Volunteering provides an opportunity to see our value has human beings and that we can contribute to our community in a positive and meaningful way.   Volunteering is also a great way to test our strengths and to gain skills that may translate to work or to other aspects of our life.

Participating in a variety of charitable activities can also help us to find our passion.  I have never been out of the country except for vacations to resorts catering to American tourists in Cancun and the Bahamas, and I have found an unexpected passion for issues related to poverty in developing countries.  Another person may find that they have a particular interest in educating at-risk kids, walking dogs at a shelter, or cleaning up a river.

Until I found my passion I felt like an important part of my life was missing.  I am not in a position quit my job to devote myself full-time to my passion.  However, I can certainly make time in my life to volunteer to address issues that are important to me, and I can take the time to help my kids discover their passions and the importance of serving others.

The Benefits of Being Charitable

 

“There is a candle in your heart ready to be kindled.  There is   a void in your soul ready to be filled.  You feel it, don’t you?”  -Rumi

When we think of the benefits of charity it is natural to think about the benefits to those being served by  charitable acts.  We often fail to see the benefits to those providing the service.

Children are naturally charitable.  For example, the toddler who tries to help his mom around the house or to soothe someone who is sad.  However, as Deborah Spaide notes in Teaching Your Kids to Care, as children grow older “society tells them that helping others is unsafe, unnecessary, or unwise” and “they are taught to restrain their charitable instincts and be realistic.”

Helping others is important to children and adults alike.  Alan Luks and Peggy Payne wrote about their research into the health effects of charity in their book The Healing Power of Doing Good.  They found both immediate health benefits to those who volunteer (the “helper’s high”), as well as long-term benefits (an increased sense of self-worth, well-being, serenity and relaxation).

Of course, the purpose of Charitable Child is to help those in need.  However, in addition to the needs of the less fortunate, there is a need among children from more privileged backgrounds to learn about the problems in the world and to be given the opportunity to use their charitable instincts to help.  It is easy to suppress the charitable instincts of children.  It happens every time an adult declines their “help” or discourages them from approaching a sad looking stranger or a stray dog.  So it is important that we make an effort to encourage children to volunteer and to engage in charitable endeavors.

Children can get involved with charity from a young age.  Helping mom and dad shop for school supplies for a child who can’t afford them or for food for a food bank, talking about what organizations the family will donate to, running a lemonade stand to benefit a charity, and giving away outgrown clothes and toys are all great ways to encourage a spirit of charity in young children.  As children get older than can do more hands on activities like helping serve food at a soup kitchen or helping someone who is elderly or disabled with yard work.

It is natural for parents to want to shelter their children from problems in the world.  The reality of some situations is certainly too much for children.  However, there are age-appropriate ways of introducing kids to poverty and other social issues.  The Resources page on the Charitable Child website has a list of books that can be used to introduce kids to these topics, and the For Kids page has ideas of ways kids can help as well as some questions to get them thinking about the issues.  I have found that introducing my kids to these issues at a young age has not traumatized them and, instead, has helped them to be more empathetic and to feel more empowered to do something to help.

Be the change

Getting Started With Charity

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can all do small things with great love.” -Mother Teresa

It is easy to feel overwhelmed when getting started with charity and volunteering.  For many of us the enormity of the job in front of us paralyzes us and prevents us from doing anything.  Fortunately, kids are often better then adults at seeing the benefits of small acts.  Helping an elderly neighbor with lawn work, befriending someone other people make fun of, making bagged lunches for the homeless, collecting books for a school in a developing country or in a poor part of America, or gathering toiletries for domestic violence shelters are all small acts that can impact many lives.  So, why don’t we volunteer more:

I WILL DO IT LATER.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”  -Anne Frank

I often find myself making excuses for why I don’t do more now.  I am waiting until my kids are older, until work isn’t quite so busy, until I decide what type of volunteer work I want to do….  Finally I have realized that while I am making excuses there are people who are suffering, organizations looking for volunteers, and projects that need funding.  Charity is like having a baby, there is never going to be a time when you say “wow, I have plenty of extra time and money so now I can be more charitable.”  Life is busy, but anyone who makes it a priority can make room for charity and volunteering.

I WOULDN’T BE GOOD AT IT.

“I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything but I can do something.  And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” -Edward Everett Hale

We all have our strengths.  For those of us who are cooking challenged, making dinners for the homeless at a soup kitchen may not be the best volunteer activity.  However, with the myriad of volunteer opportunities available today there really is something for everyone.  Even small children can contribute.  Have you ever seen an adult turn down a 3 year old selling lemonade or cookies?  Come up with your strengths and then look for volunteer opportunities that match.  If you are not good at hands on volunteering then serving on a Board of Directors or making micro-loans through Kiva may be for you.  Anyone who really wants to volunteer can find an opportunity if they put in a little bit of effort.  Websites like www.connectrichmond.org, www.idealist.org, and www.volunteermatch.org make finding volunteer opportunities easier than ever.

SOMEONE ELSE WILL DO IT.

“I wondered why somebody didn’t do something.  Then I realized, I am somebody.”  -Author unknown

It is easy to wait for someone to come up with a solution, but at some point I realized that I am just as capable as anyone else of helping solve the world’s problems.  It doesn’t matter that the only time I have traveled out of the country was to go to Cancun for a vacation – I can still help a child in Africa.  We all have unique skills that we can use to help solve problems in the world.  Of course, there are people out there who have way more money or more time, and there will always be a lot of people who could be doing more, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do everything that you can.

THE PROBLEMS ARE TOO BIG TO FIX.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.”  -Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Admittedly, most of the problems that we attempt to address with charity are big problems and the solutions are hard.  There are many problems, such as poverty and violence, that will probably always be around to some extent.  But unless we try to find solutions there is no hope that those problems will ever get better.  And teaching our kids to care is one of the most important things we can do to help find long-term solutions to problems.  We need to make sure that our children know the importance of being charitable and that, through their actions, they pass this on to their children and their children’s children.

Why We Should Care About Poverty

Until recently it was easy for me to ignore poverty. I didn’t see poverty on a regular basis and had never had to experience it first-hand. However, the issue has haunted me since I became a mother and read an article about the death of children in developing countries due to easily treatable and preventable diseases.

Now all I can think about is how I would feel if my child was sick and I was powerless to help even though a fairly inexpensive treatment was available, if my children were hungry and malnourished and I was unable to feed them, or if my family was surrounded by violence and I was unable to protect them. This is reality for millions of women around the world.

Almost half of the people in the world (about 3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 a day. UNICEF estimates that 22,000 children die every day due to poverty-related causes. More than a quarter of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or to have stunted development. More than 1.1 billion people in developing countries lack adequate access to clean drinking water and approximately 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. Approximately 1.8 million children die each year due to diarrhea.

As a mother these numbers remind me of how blessed my family is. We are not fortunate merely because of hard work or intelligence. We were fortunate to be born in a country of opportunity and into a family that gave us a good start in life. As a human being these numbers are unacceptable to me and I know that I must do something. As a society we should all be committed to doing something so that no mother has to lose a child merely because she is poor.

*Numbers provided by http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats.

It’s A Different World

My daughter calls our neighborhood and the area in which we live “our world.” She often comments on what a beautiful world we live in. Recently my son was in a baseball program that met in another part of town. This was still a fairly nice suburban area but a bit grittier than our lakefront neighborhood. The immaculately maintained landscaping, sailboats, and tidy playgrounds that she is accustomed to were replaced by patchy weeds, graffiti and pavement. My daughter quickly noted that “this world” was different and that she was glad she didn’t live there.

For the first time I realized just how sheltered my children have been. On one hand I am glad that they have been able to live an idyllic life, but I also realize that they need to learn about the world outside our neighborhood. This place was 15 minutes from our home and she found it shocking. What would she think of a developing country or an inner city public housing complex?

This experience also helped me understand the impact a person’s physical surroundings can have on them. Lucky people like my daughter know a world where they are surrounded by beauty. It makes it easy for them to develop into happy and optimistic adults. Unfortunately, many people know a world where they are surrounded by poverty, violence and decay. Imagine trying to find hope and to believe that you can succeed in a place like that.

The Starfish Story

While walking along a beach, an elderly gentleman saw someone in the distance leaning down, picking something up and throwing it into the ocean. As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, picking up starfish one by one and tossing each one gently back into the water. He came closer still and called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?” The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.” The old man smiled, and said, “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.” Upon hearing this, the elderly observer commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!” The young man listened politely. Then he bent down, picked up another starfish, threw it into the back into the ocean past the breaking waves and said, “It made a difference for that one.”

This story was adapted from the book The Star Thrower by Loren Eisley.  The story is a great way to begin a discussion with kids about volunteering, charity and the difference they can make in the world.  Actions as simple as being friendly to someone without many friends, sponsoring a child through ChildFund or Save The Children, making a small loan to an entrepreneur in a developing country through Kiva, or helping an elderly neighbor with yard work can have a huge impact on that person’s life.  When the problems in the world seem overwhelming, it is refreshing to remember that you are making a difference if you are touching the life of even one person.

Making Birthdays a Learning Experience

I will be the first to acknowledge that my kids’ prior birthdays have been a bit over the top. It’s not unusual for me to spend several hundred dollars on a birthday party and for the birthday child to come home with twenty new toys or more that we certainly don’t need and often have a hard time finding space for.

Finally, after several years of birthday excess, I have gotten a little smarter. Parties are now much smaller affairs with only the birthday child’s two or three closest friends invited. This both cuts down on the expense and on the number of gifts that we receive.

With some of the money we save on the birthday party the kids are able to pick a toy or other item to donate to a child living in poverty. I explain to my kids that these children probably don’t get birthday presents of their own so we need to share. Although my kids weren’t too excited about this idea at first, once we got online and they were able to see the items they could select for a child in a developing country they got much more excited.

We select our gifts through a catalog available on the ChildFund website. Selecting an appropriate gift also gives us the opportunity to discuss what life is like for children living in poverty.  After talking to my daughter about malaria she chose a mosquito net for a child in Africa, and after my son learned that many children don’t have any toys he selected a doll for a child in Brazil.  Surprisingly, after the fact my kids seem to remember the gift they gave away more than what gifts they received for their birthday.  I take this as a sign that this new birthday tradition is having the impact that I had hoped for.