We all know that volunteering can be a great experience for our kids. When they volunteer, students:
- Improve the lives of others.
- Meet different people.
- Learn new skills.
- Help their community.
- Learn about careers.
- Feel as though they are making a difference.
- and much more…
The trick is finding opportunities that are available to students AND are also appealing to them. Add in COVID-19 and it gets really difficult.
Here are a few of the ways we volunteer with adaptations for coronavirus restrictions:
Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots Program:
We’ve participated in this program since 2014. The central theme is service-learning, meaning that students are doing more than volunteering. They study their community, identify a need, and then work as a group to address that need. Our homeschool group families have learned so much with their projects while making our community a better place to live! For more on this program, go to rootsandshoots.org.
Coronavirus Adaptation: We’re doing things very differently this year. Our students chose to promote pollinator awareness and conservation with what they’ve named ‘The Pretty Big Pollinator Project’. Our group meetings are online and the primary push has been through student posts on social media and the website they developed. Take a look here.
Assisted Living Facilities:
This is a great opportunity for kids to connect with the elderly, particularly with visits geared around board games or craft projects. We visit annually at Christmas and present individual performances along with a group sing-a-long. We also do a play each year at the facility. The residents love seeing our students and welcome us back enthusiastically every time we visit.
Coronavirus Adaptation – The best way to connect at this time is through cards and letters. Gather up cards from your homeschool group or just other families you know. Leave a bin on your front porch for drop off and then deliver it to the nursing home. Check in with the nursing home first. They may have some suggestions as well.
Food Banks:
We are super lucky to have a food bank that allows our students to volunteer. We go once a month and sort food donations. Between the accomplishment of turning unsorted piles of food donations into neatly sorted bins and the appreciation from a wonderfully supportive staff, we all leave feeling as though we really did do something good.
Coronavirus Adaptation – Find out what your food bank needs most. Usually, they can tell you a few items that they desperately need. Gather only those items and deliver them to the food bank. They get what they need and don’t have to sort through your donation.
City or County Parks:
We’ve done our share of trash pickup and waterway cleanup for local parks and open spaces, both as part of our Roots and Shoots projects and as one-time efforts. When we did this as part of a service-learning project, we purchased a luggage scale and weighed the bags of trash we collected – super satisfying for all involved.
The only caveat – city and county officials are great to work with and usually spend some time educating the students, but there are some restrictions. It can be difficult to schedule around staff availability and they may also express liability concerns. We’ve gone the official route, but we’ve also gone rogue and just taken some trash bags and gloves to a park and cleaned up on our own.
Coronavirus Adaptation – Do it on your own. Yes, it’s more fun as a group, but there’s still trash out there.
I hope this list has helped you think of some ways you and your kids might help out in your community. As with all volunteering, it fulfills a need AND gives your kids a sense of accomplishment.
