Family Volunteering

Like many other, our family runs in five different directions eight days a week – and we only have four members! Adding family volunteer time as part of a school project sounded like one more chore on the family “to do” list, and I didn’t enter into the project with enthusiasm.

However, by committing ourselves to helping our community once a month, we discovered our family, our neighbors and ourselves. I’m sure our experience can be repeated in other families.

We discovered

Children learn

Parents learn

Choose an activity

Prep for Volunteer Day

After Volunteer Day

What makes up a family?

While we are a traditional, nuclear family, you may define family as you see fit. According to the Family Volunteer Day website [http://Disney.go.com/disneyhand/familyvolunteers], a family is “any group of two or more people who consider themselves a family.” Any mixture - grandparents/grandchildren, mom/children, dad/children, aunt/niece or nephew, a group of cousins, etc, can do family volunteering.

And family volunteering is a great activity for a parent sharing custody following a divorce. Instead of becoming just another play date, a visit with mom or dad can become a shared experience thanks to a volunteer date. Parents gain a great opportunity to see their children’s growth in skills and talents, watch their personalities grow and adapt, and build a bond through shared experiences.

By volunteering as a family, we discovered:

• It gave us time as a family
• We bonded by having a shared goal
• We viewed each other in a new and different light
• We left our regular routines behind, at least for that one day a month
• We became more of a team
• We laughed over the shared memories of the experience
• We talked a lot more – both during the experience and afterward

And not only did we grow as a family, but both children and parents had great experiences:

Our children learned:

• A new perspective on their own lives and wants
• A better attitude towards other family members
• An awareness of their community and needs within the community
• Self esteem from a positive, helping experience
• No matter what their age, they can contribute to help others in need
• Hard work can pay in ways other than cash

As parents we learned:

• To recognize our children’s abilities
• To listen to our children’s choices
• New ways to communicate with our children
• An increased awareness of the need to share experiences with our children.

How to choose an activity

• Sit down as a family to discuss your options
• Let every family member make a suggestion for an activity (while only one will be chosen now, the others may be saved for later times)
• Look at things your children are interested in (Pets? Reading? Construction?)
• Keep in mind both parents’ and children’s abilities and skills
• Start slow with a one-time arrangement
• Find opportunities through religious groups, Yellow Pages, school groups (PTA/PTO, Key Club, student council, etc), research on the internet
• Make sure children/teens are welcome (some groups have age limitations due to activity or insurance issues)

How to prep for the volunteer day

• Make sure activity falls within children’s interests
• Plan in advance so both your family and the organization has time to prep
• Discuss event with your children the week, day, etc ahead
• Share your enthusiasm about the activity
• Talk about what everyone thinks will happen.

When volunteer activity is over

• Discuss the experience as a family
• Talk about what you learned
• Pick your next activity based on this one

Through our experience, we learned that regardless of the make-up of your family or your daily schedule, you can find time to volunteer in your community. In fact, we learned that because our schedule is so full, serving our community is the perfect activity for our family; it gave us a time to work together while serving others and taught us to focus on something other than our immediate needs.

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