Summer Service Projects for Families

By Dana Curtin

Summer time is a great time to get involved with short term service projects with your family. Many agencies are short of help, as their regular volunteers take time off for vacations themselves. Serving those who are less fortunate is also a great lesson for our children and helps teach them thankfulness for the abundance that most of us have. If you don’t want to work with an organization, there are many things to be done by yourselves also.

*Mobile Meals/Meals on Wheels – Often drivers are only needed one day a week. Allow a couple of hours to complete your route, especially if you aren’t familiar with it. This is something our family has done. We had one driver, one navigator, and two people who put the tray together and carried it in to the recipient. The elderly people on the route loved seeing children.

*Food Pantry – Most pantries are busier than ever. Check to see what days your local pantry hands out food. Often people are needed to sack food. A good job for a teenager is to help people carry bags of food to their cars.

*Columbia Parachute – Project This can be purchased through Voice of the Martyrs for a nominal fee. This is something our family has done also. I would recommend it for children over ten. Everything you need to assemble parachutes is included in the kit. Parachutes are used to drop bibles and radios which broadcast church sermons over the hostile areas of Columbia. A DVD is also included which shows the parachutes being dropped. For more information contact VOM at P.O. Box 443, Bartlesville, OK, 74005 or call (918) 337-8015.

*Assemble Care Packages – Many homeless shelters hand out zip lock bags full of toiletries for the homeless. Your family can assemble these and take them to the shelter. Keep a couple of the packs in your car to hand out if you see someone in need. A hot summer day is also a great time to pass out water bottles to the homeless.

*Become involved as a family with a ministry in your church such as VBS, Back to School Backpacks, or care packages for the military. If your church doesn’t collect backpacks and school supplies, your family can put a few together and take to your school. The administration is usually aware of kids who are in need.

*Lemonade Stand – Build a lemonade stand together. Pick a charity to donate your proceeds to.

*Clothes Closet – Everyone in the family can go through their clothing and donate outgrown, gently used clothing to a clothes closet.

*Trash pick up – Pick a park in your community or a street in a neighborhood, grab some trash bags and a pair of gloves for everyone and pick up trash and pull weeds in the sidewalks.

Most importantly, pray as a family before you get started about where God wants you to give of your time and talents.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

Please share with us service projects your family has enjoyed doing.