“How can I instill a value of community awareness and service learning with my family?” This is a frequent question I get from parents and grandparents. Young children are often, particularly during our pandemic, raised in a small, nuclear bubble. Their world consists of family, neighbors, school friends and sports/activity team mates. That can often mean that they are surrounded by people who look like them. So, what suggestions can help us broaden the next generation’s horizon?
Just by asking the question, you’ve taken the first important step. Here are some suggested steps:
1.). Awareness. Think about the unintended consequences of “sheltering children from the real world.” Most neighborhoods and school districts are not diverse. When this is an entire focus and perspective, it creates a norm that “all families” live like this. When they are eventually exposed to a wider world, a sense of entitlement and superiority can develop.
2.) Modeling. Don’t underestimate the important of modeling behaviors for children. Children who see parents and other adults volunteering in the community grow up thinking that is an important aspect of life. These can be small acts of kindness—taking a meal over to a neighbor who just had surgery, handing out socks to homeless people on street corners, organizing a food drive for a birthday party. And they can be part of a value tradition—serving meals or distributing food at a local non-profit to honor a holiday or family birthday each year. An important element is regularity. How can you add new traditions that are other-focused to enhance your long standing family traditions? How can you shift the mindset from receiving and material wealth focus to one of giving to others as part of special holidays and milestones? This will help you assimilate into Austin where there is a culture of neighbors helping neighbors.
3.) Goals and Purpose. Helping children discover meaningful goals and purpose—including a commitment to something larger than oneself and the realization that one’s passions and interests go beyond material goods. These are critical for developing young people’s identity and self-worth which will drive life-long happiness. Engaging children in summer and after school volunteering and service learning will begin to widen their horizon, exposing them to people from different races, ages, abilities, interests, and socio-economic backgrounds. Having an opportunity to make a difference, to feel that what you are doing is having an impact, can be a powerful motivator in shaping the discovery of a young person’s goals and purpose. For many people believing in an organization, its mission and values, its solutions for its clients, that they are contributing to a winning solution in the community, is formative.
4.) Communication. Children develop their views about money and expected lifestyle from what they observe about how and how much their parents and families around them spend. This comes from non-verbal and as well as planned intentional verbal communications. Do they see parents indulge frequently? Contemplate large purchases? Contribute charitable donations? How are you talking and demonstrating the value of wealth and money? Small, frequent conversations about money can be more effective than waiting for the “perfect conversation.”
5.) Consistency. Engaging in the community in frequent, easy to execute ways works well for busy families and makes it more likely to do frequently. Tying activities to a regular, easy to plan for routine will help parents and grandparents keep on track. Maybe it is a seasonal visit with homemade decorations for a nursing home or delivering the church flowers to elderly people one Sunday each month before going to brunch or turning a birthday celebration into a park clean up and tree planting. Those regular activities are easy to plan for and easy to include in family life.
So how can we engage families in community volunteering in Austin? With very young children, start with short, periodic, FUN! activities—collecting children’s books for a women and children’s shelter for a birthday party contribution, delivering water in the summer to people working in community gardens, making a thank you picture for first responders, singing songs or delivering homemade art to a neighborhood nursing home or veteran’s hospital.
For children who are a little bit older, there are options with the parks departments to clean up, plant vegetation, work on soil erosion; there are opportunities at animal shelters, toddler story time, or transporting the toy carts at a children’s hospital.
For high school students, there are many options for direct community service and regular volunteering and advocacy in non-profit organizations large and small. This is another way to help the younger generation discover their passions and try out new skills to gain mastery, confidence, and satisfaction.
One indirect Austin service learning opportunity on the grant-making side is Girls Giving Grants (G3). Impact Austin, the women’s collective giving foundation in Central Texas, provides a high school aged collective giving group. About one hundred young women pool $100 each and then review grant requests, discuss the ways these non-profits are serving their clients, and select a recipient for an approximately $10,000 grant to fund their program. High school students meet other young women from across the metro area, exercise team building and leadership skills and learn about non-profits that are focused on improving our community. https://www.impactaustin.org/girls-giving-grants
Another group for middle and high school girls is one of the eleven Austin branches of the National Charity League. Invited perspective members who are mothers and daughters enter into six-year commitment involving service, leadership development and cultural experiences by both the mother and daughter. The program begins in the 7th grade and girls are selected during the 6th grade. https://www.nationalcharityleague.org/vpage/index-austin/
Review current websites (or call!) during our uneven, unpredictable rules and schedules with the pandemic and early emergence from COVID. Here are a few links to Austin non-profits with volunteering with kids:
https://do512family.com/volunteering-with-kids-in-austin/
The key to success—just get started small and enjoy the journey. It will be good for your soul, create a new bonding opportunity AND help the next generation develop a habit of helping others.