by Joy Mosenfelder

Created on: January 19, 2012

It is never too early to start learning about community, charity, respect, and responsibility.  As with many things, children and preteens often learn best when actively engaged working on a project or activity that demonstrates the lesson you are trying to teach rather than reading about an issue, or listening to adults lecture on the subject.  When teaching kindness, an astute parent or guardian will find plenty of opportunities in his or her local community to enlist his or her child's help volunteering with organizations or events meant to help underprivileged members of the community.  While browsing the multitude of available events parents and guardians will notice that  these opportunities tend to fall into two categories: those that involve interacting with the populations they strive to help, and those that don't.  While assisting at a fundraiser or food drive certainly holds some lessons regarding generosity, responsibility, and kindness; a single day serving food in a soup kitchen or helping an elderly member of the community with errands and household tasks can immediately change a young person's perspective on life.  

Most communities have a wide variety of agencies and organizations that provide services and support to varies groups of under served and underprivileged members of the community.  Such agencies may focus on one subset of the population; such as low income families, elderly households, veterans, immigrants, disabled members of the community, at risk youth, or homeless individuals or households; others may serve more than one group or the community at large.  Parents and guardians who don't know where to begin might try their community's web page to see if there is a list of such organizations, or contact city hall for recommendations.  Community based organizations are often underfunded and understaffed and eager to find new volunteers to help with upcoming events, or day to day tasks on an ongoing basis.  Many organizations will have a volunteer coordinator on staff to work with prospective volunteers and assign them duties appropriate to their age and skill level.  Parents and guardians may want to volunteer with their children to share in their experience, however, more mature children and preteens may also learn from the experience of volunteering under the supervision of agency staff or more experienced volunteers without parental oversight.  

Parents

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