The Enchanting Challenge Blog

Although this blog has primarily focused on students volunteering, that is not to say that the service world lives and breathes solely with students.  No, the service frontier has no borders, and, as one of our readers brought to light the other day, serving with your whole family can be one of the most rewarding ways to give back to a community.

Depending on what kind of service your family wants–local, national, or international; religious, environmental, or health-related–there are a number of places to begin your search.

As we mentioned on the Local Service Trips post, if you want to begin your service work in your own neighborhood, places such as the Chamber of Commerce, the local Public Library, your town or city’s main webpage, http://www.idealist.org and http://www.craigslist.org are all great places to start.  All of these information hubs will have great info about volunteer opportunities to do alone AND with your family! 

If your family is looking to do a service trip nationally or internationally, once again, http://www.idealist.org and http://www.craigslist.org are wonderful tools to use.  Idealist.org specifically has a webpage devoted to family volunteering– http://www.idealist.org/kt/familyvolunteer.html.  This webpage provides wonderful resources that address such questions as why volunteering with your family is such a good decision, where to find volunteer opportunities for your family, what types of organizations are directed towards family volunteering, how to volunteer abroad with your family, and how other families have felt after embarking on such a service journey.  This webpage is truly one of the best resources I could recommend in terms of finding family-oriented service trips.

Aside from Idealist.org, there are a number of other online resources that may help you and your family.  For instance, http://www.familytravelnetwork.com/articles/dogood_about.asp is a great site that can lead you to a number of organizations that coordinate family service trips.  Some of these organizations include the following: the Global Citizens Network, which plans family volunteer trips to New Mexico, Arizona, Washington, Mexico, Nepal, Guatemala, Kenya, and Tanzania (http://www.globalcitizens.org); Cross-Cultural Solutions, which has programs in Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Peru, Tanzania, Thailand, and Russia (http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org); the Oceanic Society which takes family volunteers on participatory research and natural history expeditions (http://www.oceanic-society.org); and Volunteer America which sends families all over the United States to donate their time to giving back to nature (http://www.volunteeramerica.net/vacations). 

I could go on and on with further details of good websites, but to stop myself from boring you, I will simply list some of the great ones.  I really recommend that you check out the following sites for family volunteering opportunities:

http://www.greatschools.net/content/article.page?aid=432

http://www.serveyourworld.com/articles/302/1/Family-Volunteering-Abroad

http://www.ccspm.org/family_volunteer_opportunities.aspx

I also suggest researching nationally recognized organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity, which are open to applicants from individuals and from families.  For example, simply visit Habitat’s webpage at http://www.habitat.org/ to see what kinds of programs are available and attractive for your family.  If you visit the website, on the left-hand side of the menu bar there is a tab called ¨Get Involved.¨  Within this tab, there are a number of options that you and your family should check out.  There is the ¨Volunteer Locally¨ option, which might appeal to your family.  Also, there is the ¨Volunteer Programs¨ option, which includes national as well as international programs, both of which might jump out to you.   Finally, there is also the ¨Events¨ option which provides you with three more options, including the ¨Search Local Events¨ option.  If you click on that option, you can search for all of the local conferences and volunteer projects happening in your geographical area.  A conference may be a wonderful starting point for you and your family to find out more information on how and where you can volunteer together.

Finally, a last great resource to use, if available, is your local religious organization.  If your family is affiliated with a religious center such as a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, these institutions often plan and sponsor family-oriented service trips.  For example, in the town I grew up in, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, the town’s Episcopal Church planned an annual service trip to Appalachia where the volunteers would travel by bus to West Virginia.  There they would work for one week building, painting, and repairing homes together with their families and fellow church members.  It was a wonderful experience, one that enriched all the volunteers by removing them from the hum-drum of daily life and placing them in a situation where their work had immediately profound effects.  The experience was further intensified by sharing it between families. 

To volunteer together as a family would be a truly and unforgettably profound experience.  On Idealist.org’s family volunteering webpage, they paint the perfect image of how great this experience can be: ¨If you would like to find a new, fun way to spend time with your family, consider family volunteering. Imagine you and your family planting trees with the Nature Conservatory or collecting data on dolphins with the Earthwatch Institute. Donating time with your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters, your aunt, your foster mom, your dad, or even all 16 of your cousins offers a unique way for your family to spend time together while helping your community¨ (http://www.idealist.org/kt/familyvolunteer.html).