The holiday season always reminds us how truly blessed we are in this life. And one of the best ways that we like to take advantage of our blessings is to give back to our local community. If your family is looking for small and big ways to give back this holiday season, consider the list below.
Awesome Ways Your Family Can Give Back This Holiday Season
- Have your children make cards and small craft gifts to deliver to a local nursing home
- Make a pact to run a race in 2015. One of our favorite local organizations is Team Orphans. They’re a group dedicated to helping abandoned children by competing in their honor. Whether you’re a single athlete seeking sponsorship for an event or a group of determined individuals fundraising and competing together, you can help make a change one race at a time.
As a family, you could
agree to start training for the Team Orphans Cookie 5K this year. It’s a beautiful 5K and 1 mile run/walk at Robinette’s Apple Haus each summer in July. Thousands of homemade cookies and chocolate milk are waiting for runners and walkers at the finish line. Registration is $20 person/60 family and every dollar is donated to adoption grants for special needs orphans. Team Orphans also needs lots of volunteers- cookie bakers, water stations, set up, clean up, etc. Registration will open this spring at
www.teamorphans.com You could also volunteer to be a cookie bakers for the Fifth Third Riverbank Run Expo Booth in
May. Just email
rebeccateamorphans@gmail.com if you would like to bake! We give away thousands of cookie with our Cookie 5K postcards.
You can also make a family pact to collect this year for Team Orphans Change for Change: Collect change all year around and bring it to the Cookie 5K in July. Every year hundreds of dollars of coins are donated to our adoption grants. This is also a great VBS project or kids club project.
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Ask your children to go through their toys, then choose toys hat they can donate to a local donation center
- Volunteer as a family at a soup kitchen.
- Choose an angel from your church’s angel tree.
- While you’re grocery shopping, fill a grocery bag for your local food bank
- Donate a bag of clothing you no longer wear to your local donation center
- Give up coffee for week and donate your typical expenses to a charity
- Support a soldier in your community by sending him or her cards and small Christmas gifts
- Rescue a new furry friend from your local animal shelter
It doesn’t take much to make the world a more beautiful place. Often, one small act of kindness is enough. What traditions do you and your family have for giving back to your local community? We would love to hear of any organizations that could use help this season. Please let us know in your comments below.
