every spring BIG SUNDAY arrives and this year it is upon us may 3rd. this is a day where families everywhere volunteer to help a long list of organizations. similar to michelle obama's "call to service", this day asks you to just DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING to help out. anywhere.
i keep hearing schools talk about "100% participation" about different things from giving money to parking in the correct pick-up spot, BUT... what if we had a world where giving back had 100% participation? imagine what that would look like.
if you can't find anything near you, feel free to take ideas listed on this site and have your own "little sunday".
the lesson: true, our kids have homework and soccer and ballet and sunday school. our lives are FULL, but if we can expose them to helping and giving kinds of experiences, they will shine, grow and feel in ways that will reward not only the recipient of the help, but mostly your child. they will feel big and significant in the world. they can make a difference.
*** added bonus: i say SUNDAES for all participants of "big sunday"! of course, you'll have to organize the trip to ben and jerry's on your own.
1 comments:
hi meredith. inspired by you and your wonderful kid-philanthrophy blog, i put together a service project for my daughter for her first communion this sunday. she is 8. as one of her gifts, we are presenting her with a list of 6 local service projects she can pick from, and do with either my husband or me. we will book a date this summer on a day that works for our family & the organization, and she can pick from helping animals (shelter) to helping the homeless/hungry (food bank), to helping kids with disabilities. we created a "journal" page to also wrap up with her gift, where she can write the name of the project she chose, the date, reflections before she does the project (what she hopes to get out of it), and reflections after the project (what she learned). this she can keep as a memory and for posterity. after she gets back from the service project, we will have a special family dinner in our backyard (she picks the menu) so she can share with us her observations and learnings. not sure what you call this, but we named it "Celia's First Communion Service Project" and hope to do it again with our other kids as well. (Celia is our first.) we do whatever family volunteering we can, and we really want to underscore that the point of any sacrament or "spiritual" rite of passage is to reach out to others in need. anyway, thanks for your inspiration over the year/s. . .
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