Operation Give Back- 12 months, 12+ volunteer adventures

There comes a time when, as a parent, you realize...my kids are in great need of a gratitude check.   For our family and my kids, that time has arrived.  My children are like so many, they are good and kind and care about others but are still very detached from the idea that they have so much and so many have so little.  They are very tuned into their wants and needs and very detached from the idea that they are part of a community.  Also, like so many other children, my children want things...constantly.  One wants the same amount of cookies as the other child, the other doesn't feel that her sister should get to go on a playdate if she doesn't get to go on one. They want a certain kind of shoes and clothes from a certain store. They want the latest tech toy and sometimes they think they are the only kids in the world that have to do chores to earn allowance. They believe they need to see the newest movie, right when it comes out.  Again, my kids are amazing, they are generous, they are generally respectful, they are basically good kids. They don't throw tantrums or nag me persistently and I would never say that my children are spoiled rotten.  They just lack perspective. It's not as though I haven't tried. I don't indulge their every want or material desire. We donate clothes and toys quarterly. We don't bring new things into the house unless we are giving something away as well.  We donate food to food pantries regularly and have volunteered at food banks in the past. I have had countless discussions with them and shown them pictures and websites and we choose a charity for them to donate to each year.

However, I have grown tired of saying things like, "you have no idea how lucky you are...  There are kids in the world who are happy to have electricity, shelter, a healthy family, and you are crying about not having the same amount of ice cream in your bowl as your sister."  I am tired of telling them to appreciate our soldiers because they help to protect us.  I am tired of telling them to pick up trash when they see it because our beaches and nature are precious. I am just tired of telling them. So, I decided it is time to show them.  I am not ready to take them to a poverty stricken country...yet.  However, I am ready to make volunteering in our community a regular part of their lives.  I want them to see, up front and personal, that there are people who can't leave their homes, who don't have homes, who have sick children in hospitals for weeks on end, that our beaches are littered with trash, and the list goes on. We don't have to leave the country, let alone our community, to see that we are needed.  There are plenty of opportunities to give back right in our little piece of the world.  More than just seeing that there are people who have less than them, I want them to see how they can be a part of the community around them. I want to make giving back a regular part of their life, a part of who they become, and this is how Operation Give Back came to be.  Operation Give Back is just one experiment of several in my new experiment to raise gratitude in our girls and our home.

When I first told the girls about this experiment they were ecstatic. They expressed how much they missed volunteering at the food bank in Texas.  We moved from Texas to Florida and life got busy and so, regretfully, we have not done a whole lot of hands on volunteering this last year.  It was time and they were all for it.  They were also excited to get a jump start on earning service hours for college.  This is how they are trained to think at school.  My oldest is only in 6th grade but she has already been so programmed to look at everything from the perspective of "how will this help me get into a good college."  This is not what my goal was.  I explained this to her and she immediately understood.  We are not keeping track of our hours.  The only thing that we should hope to get out of this is a grounding perspective, and a full heart. The only thing we are going to keep track of is the faces, the smiles, the feelings of compassion and fulfillment and the satisfaction of a hard day's work without any expectation of receiving anything in return: we will be giving back and paying it forward.  And we will record the journey forever in our heart...and I will record it here.

We started this experiment in September but it has taken me a while to post about it.  I am finally getting around to it and this month of thankfulness and gratitude that was brought about by unlikely parties joining to create community for just a day seems like the perfect time to post about it.  Below, I posted pictures and a description of our September and October volunteering adventures.


September 2014
We started with a true community effort. We helped to rebuild a community garden in Dania Beach that had been destroyed by flooding.  We worked alongside the greatest people from all ages and walks of life. We worked hard and it was far from glamorous but it was fulfilling to see the mountain of compost soil diminish throughout the morning and see all of the rows of soil bags grow and to know that the community garden would thrive again.

September 2014: helped to build a community garden in Dania Beach



Shoveling compost and soil with a team of volunteers to bring a community garden to life.



 














October 2014
We spent an entire summer on the beach.  We walked passed countless pieces of trash.  We would leave beach events and see the litter thrown about.  We just left and went home. We picked up after ourselves, but what could we do about the mess that so many others decided to just leave? We left it, too. In October, I decided to take the girls to participate in a clean the beach day.  This was a harder volunteering adventure because it was tedious and it felt futile.  No matter how long we picked up trash, there was still more to be picked up.  We walked for miles and found bags full of trash.  Cigarette butts, bottle water caps, pieces of plastic that had been tossed around in the ocean for so long and had traveled so far that they were now morphed into something that almost looked like a shell or something that now belonged in the ocean.  We found little toys and dental floss picks, plastic bags and ball point pens.  It was a lesson in futility and responsibility that we will never forget.  The girls collected little treasures along the way but said they would rather shovel compost then pick up beach trash because at least it felt like you were getting somewhere, the mountain of compost can be conquered where beach trash is a never ending task. We felt humbled by this volunteering adventure. 



Cleaning Hollywood Beach

 
 

I was amazed at the endless amount of little pieces of trash I uncovered in the seaweed

 

It seemed like so much but we knew that it was really just a small spec of a fraction of how much trash there is on our beaches and in our ocean. Humbling.

Someone's beach trash is someone else's beach treasure.

This month, November, we are going to volunteer at a large community volunteer event where we will spend the day putting together Thanksgiving gifts for members of our military who are separated from their family, for the homeless, and for the elderly.  We will also be volunteering with Meals on Wheels on Thanksgiving Day.  I volunteered with Meals on Wheels years ago, and it made an everlasting impression on me.  I will never forget the woman who gently grabbed my hand and asked me to stay and eat with her.  I wasn't allowed to but I was allowed to hug her. In December, we signed up to volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House to create a magical movie night for hospitalized children and their families. I look forward to this experiment changing our perspectives and our lives forever.  I will post our adventures throughout the year.  Let the giving season begin.