Volunteer with Your Teen: Make Charity Work a Family Effort

Maybe this is the last summer before your teen goes to college. Or maybe you are just looking for a way to connect with your child, and benefit your community at the same time. And maybe you are a teenager who wants to get involved with your family and save a small part of the world.

There are thousands of ways you and your family can get involved this summer. You can spread cheer locally, or help out abroad. You can give two hours a week, or twenty (you could probably do more, but let's be realistic).

First, find out what areas of interest you have. If you are the parent, looking to involve your older child, you should probably look at volunteer opportunities with his interests in mind.

If you are interested in the environment, it's a sure bet you can pick up litter at a local park, beach, river or other scenic area. Or you can plant trees. In fact, treesforlife.org will also plant 10 fruit trees in a developing country when you buy a tree-planting kit to plant with your family.

If you and your family are up to it, there is a great need right now for volunteers to foster a pet for someone who has been called for military duty. Knowing that their pet has a loving family to be with instead of the uncertain environment of a shelter brings a lot of peace of mind to people on active military duty. Check out netpets.com for more information on this program.

Along with the military theme, you can also send a family email each week to a deployed member of the armed forces. Or do the old-fashioned thing and write letters. And send a care package once a month or so, of course.

Fire trucks and police cruisers like to be equipped with teddy bears in the event they are dealing with a traumatized child. You and your family can make teddy bears if you are interested in sewing and crafts; or you can buy and donate teddy bears instead.

Food pantries are always looking for cheerful people with strong arms and backs to open and stock canned and boxed goods. They also need people to shop on a regular basis, and this is a great way to work together at life skills as a family. And your teenager might be interested in this idea, too: assemble birthday bags for the food pantry. Fill a few bags with candles, a cake mix, a coloring book or some toys to be distributed to clients of the food pantry whose child is having a birthday that month.

Deliver meals to shut-ins. Meals on Wheels is probably the best known organization for this opportunity, but your local churches may have a similar program. But picking up and delivering hot meals should be an enjoyable way to spend time with your teen.

At holiday time, take the opportunity to shop for someone else. Almost any shopping mall, church, and the Salvation Army has some version of "Angel Trees". These trees are festooned with cards containing a child's information: age, gender, interests, and clothing sizes. This is such a fun and rewarding activity for the whole family to do. Or you could choose to adopt a family of your own for one holiday season.

Of course, if you wanted to go all out, you could take a volunteer vacation. Every year, local churches in our area send volunteer teams to the poorest parts of Appalachia to do repair work to people's homes. Teams are still being sent to areas affected by Katrina and other hurricanes. And if you are adventurous enough, Globalvolunteers.org sponsors volunteer work projects all over the world, and many of them will host families with children.

There is no shortage of work to be done, even in your local community. And family volunteering has been proven to strengthen communication and bonds; build shared memories; provide quality family time; and provide an active way to teach children kindness, compassion, and good citizenship.