This Time It’s Personal: An Experiment in Family Volunteering

The start of a new year is often a time for reflection for me.  After years of watching my wife use her Masters degree in Social Work to constantly help people, I feel a pull to do something more tangible myself.  And with two teenage sons, I find myself feeling like I could set a better example for them.

As I thought about what to do about it, I was inspired by the experiences of a friend and her daughter.  In 2017,  they volunteered with a different charity each month - with a focus on organizations which had personal meaning or relevance to them.  They have shared their experiences here.

With this as inspiration, I called a family meeting (which you can imagine they all loved).  I shared that I would like to do something similar, but doing the activities together as a family.  Specifically, I asked each of my boys and and my wife to come up with three organizations that have a personal meaning to them, and research what types of activities or events we can support.  Writing a check does not count in this case - we have to DO something.  And of course I have to come up with three that are personally meaningful to me.

To my surprise, everyone seemed to think it was a cool idea and quickly started generating possible organizations.  Because my children aren’t always the most thorough (and possibly due to my own issues), I created three Word docs for each person to fill out which include:

• Name of Organization
• Description of Activity/Event
• Date
• Why did you choose this? What is your personal connection to it?

I don’t know yet what we will do for every month of the year, but the first few have been organized and I am excited to see what everyone comes up with.  I also don’t know if this will become a regular activity for us every year, but even if it just helps my kids increase their awareness of all the people in the world that need help and all the different ways they can help them, it will be time well spent.

And I am hopeful that by sharing these experiences each month with my LinkedIn network, it will inspire at least a few others to put their own spin on it and spread a little goodness.