Things That Make You Love And Hate Community Services.

Children Reaching Children

Children Reaching Children and Community Service is a Family Affair

War is a terrible thing. And the war we are trying to get through right now sure has its share of brutality and loss of life. The sad thing is that it is the children who are most affected by such a war. And they are the ones who least understand what is going on around them.

But even in situations as sad and desperate as a war zone, you can sometimes find rays of hope and moments where people reach out to each other in a way that really helps. One such way happens every time that children in our country reach out to children halfway around the world. This happens every day through the many school projects that help kids find a way to send some needed supplies, a letter of encouragement, and some joy to the children overseas who are enduring war in their country.

These kinds of community service projects that teachers in thousands of school rooms all over America have their children do go far to help bring international understanding and hope between peoples. It is safe to say that these outreaches do as much or more for the children extending the help as they do for the children to receive the packages from strangers far away.

This is community service at the largest possible scale. We can call it that because when children reach out and help other children, even hardened and syndical adults are touched because we see a global community, the community of mankind, and the community of children everywhere rise up to help others in need. The good this does is just as valuable as a community service project as an effort to pick up trash in the park or to gather food for the homeless, as good as those efforts are.

For the children on the giving end of these community outreaches, the learning experience is invaluable. Many times the teachers will use an American soldier someone knows as a point of contact. That brave soldier can make sure the gifts sent by the children get to local children of a similar age. If he can take some pictures or a video that can be sent back to America, the excitement the givers of the gifts experience is electric.

Too often, we all watch stories of atrocities or the suffering of war, and we cannot really connect to what is going on because it is so far away and those people are not really connected to us. But when these children send presents to children suffering the effects of war, they gain a sense of connection, an empathy, and that “brotherhood” or sisterhood with children far away who have the same hopes, dreams, and daily needs that the kids in their classroom have.

When a teacher takes their class through an exercise like this, the lesson time always pays off because the teacher and the parents of the children see immediate interest in the far away affairs in these kids. It can be disconcerting to a parent to see their elementary school-age child glued to the evening news and the coverage of the war to see if they can spot a child that might have received their package. All of a sudden, those far away children are real, and all our kids want for them is for them to enjoy a simple toy, a nice thing to eat, and a quiet day when nobody in their family dies.

For the children in a war zone, these packages can be as much of a revelation as it is for the senders. They can look at the pictures of children from America who took the time to send something just for them. All of a sudden, American children are just like them, and they care. A simple gift like this can change a heart from one of hate to one of a child who has found a friend. We should be happy our teachers are helping our kids connect to faraway children and that the result is our kids empathize with people suffering around the world. These lessons will make them better citizens of their communities, of their country, and of the world when they are grown and raising children of their own.

Community Service is a Family Affair

Sometimes we think our kids never listen to us. This can be a complicated problem when kids become teenagers. It seems that no matter what we tell them, they just shrug and give us that obnoxious response of “whatever,” and we make no impact at all.

But any child or youth counselor will tell us that this is absolutely not the case. That outside show of indifference is just that, a show. Teenagers do not jump from children to sophisticated, hardened, and cynical adults in a few weeks or months’ time. The emotional growth of a human at this age moves along just as slowly as when they were children. So even though they are adult looking on the outside, on the inside, you still have a very emotional little boy or girl who want nothing more than to please mom and dad and still try to figure out this new world they are living in.

Children and teenagers value the time they get with their parents tremendously. It might be twenty years later when you come to realize how important it is to them, but they need both quality and quantity time with their mom and their dad. It is part of how their personalities form, and it has a huge impact on their self-esteem and ability to go out there and conquer the world.

They learn how to handle stress from their parents. They learn how to succeed and how to gracefully lose and how to take a loss and turn it into a win from the people they know the best, and that is their parents. Yes, they do listen to what you say. But they listen more than you may even realize. They listen to what adults say to each other and to other adults. And they listen even more closely to what you say with your actions.

We all want to instill good values in our kids. But how to do that and still have some fun times with them and do so in the limited time everybody is home. Well, one outstanding way is to plan for family outings that include service projects to the community. That is one outstanding way to “talk with your actions” about your commitment to community service.

Now that concept may at first seem like you are just going to add more work to your already full plate of things to do. But doing a service project as a family doesn’t have to be tedious and tiring. There are tons of things you can do that provide service to your community but are lots of fun for everyone, including…

* Go have fun at the park, but while you are there, pick up every tiny bit of litter you can find.

* Be a volunteer at the family night at church and help the little kids enjoy the rides and games that are planned for them. Your own little ones will love seeing you be in charge of the Jupiter Jump, and it will build community.

* Find an area along the river where erosion is happening and plant a tree. It will hold back the erosion, and you can have fun doing a gardening project and maybe even wet a hook and catch a fish.

* Go down to the shelter and read your favorite books to needy children. The kids can bring the books that were precious to them as little ones, and they get to feel that joy of seeing a child laugh at the same things they laughed at when they were young. Be careful, though, that you don’t find your kids wanting to adopt every kid at the shelter by the time you are done.

Family service projects are a hidden goldmine of fun and bonding for the whole family. Once you get started doing them, you won’t want to stop. You will find the whole family rushing to get ready each evening or looking forward to Saturday when they can get out there and do another one. And while you are building family unity and bonding with your kids, they are finding out that community service is a way of life and a great way to have fun at the same time.