If you don’t have a high school stu­dent yet, you may be think­ing that vol­un­teer­ing is a fun way to teach your lit­tle cherubs to think of oth­ers. And, you’d be right.  If you do have high school stu­dents, you may be think­ing that vol­un­teer­ing is a great way to occu­py your res­i­dent adults and looks good on a tran­script. Again, you’d be right. So why don’t more of us vol­un­teer? And how do we volunteer? 

As I’m sure you know, my fam­i­ly, one year ago almost to the day, moved from “vaca­tion­land” to “the vol­un­teer state”.  Why any­one would choose to do such a thing is beyond me, but here we are.  This state that we are in is known for hav­ing more vol­un­teers than any oth­er state, or at least that’s what the locals tell me. It is some­thing that they are proud of, and I com­mend them for it.  Also, it is some­thing that con­victs me about how lit­tle my fam­i­ly active­ly volunteers. 

In order to embrace this idea of vol­un­teer­ing, let’s explore the why. Why should we volunteer?

In our lit­er­a­ture class­es, we teach our stu­dents to ana­lyze both sides of an issue using what is called an “ANI” chart.  That is an affir­ma­tive, neg­a­tive, and infor­ma­tion­al chart.  Let’s do this : Fam­i­lies should vol­un­teer 

Affir­ma­tive: 

• self­less
• helps oth­ers
• gives us a chance to share the gospel
• looks good on col­lege applications
• sup­ports a good cause
• helps us make con­nec­tions with like-mind­ed people

Neg­a­tive: 

• it’s work
• requires us to think out­side of ourselves
• takes time

Truth­ful­ly, these lists could be much longer, but I just want­ed to give you an idea of how we might ana­lyze this ques­tion.  Now that we are fair­ly con­vinced that we should vol­un­teer, how do we? 

Here’s seven things to consider when looking for ways to volunteer with your kids: 

1. con­sid­er the involve­ment required (a few hours a week, or month?) 
2. con­sid­er the ages of your chil­dren (can every­one do it, or is it more for your old­er kids?)
3. con­sid­er the dri­ving involved (is it local, or does it trav­el around?)
4. con­sid­er your sched­ule (vol­un­teer­ing may be self­less, but it’s not self-induced burnout. Use some dis­cre­tion to see if it will work with you)
5. con­sid­er the mis­sion and vision of the orga­ni­za­tion (my boys aren’t vol­un­teer­ing with the local planned par­ent­hood, sor­ry not sorry.) 
6. con­sid­er the polit­i­cal or col­lege con­nec­tion the orga­ni­za­tion might have (espe­cial­ly if vol­un­teer­ing to appeal to cer­tain col­lege admissions) 
7. con­sid­er the lead­er­ship struc­ture of the organization/group (the lead­er­ship can make or break the hard work of its volunteers)

When you find a great orga­ni­za­tion with a vision that you and your fam­i­ly can stand behind and help make a real­i­ty, then vol­un­teer­ing becomes an addic­tive activ­i­ty.  Join us this month as we explore the idea of vol­un­teer­ing more in our com­mu­ni­ties and beyond. 

Found a great organization to volunteer with? Share it with us!