Be the Change: Volunteer With Your Kids

Thank you to Comcast for inviting my daughter and me to the 16th annual Comcast Cares Day on April 22 at Sutro Elementary School in San Francisco and for sponsoring this post. 

It takes a lot to get me up early on a weekend morning because I adore sleep. Sleep makes me deliriously happy and yet, this past Saturday I got up at the crack of my pompis.

Why would anyone set their alarm for 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday, if they don’t have to? 

I’ll tell you why I set my alarm on this particular Saturday: it was the morning of Comcast Cares Day and my 8-year-old daughter and I had a date with volunteerism. That’s right, I set the alarm so that my daughter and I could attend a volunteer event. I could have gone without my daughter, it would have been easier to go without my daughter, but I wanted her to go because I’m tryin’ to raise lifelong volunteers over here and this was the perfect event to bring my children to even though I could only bring my eldest daughter because the youngest already had plans, but that’s OK because like I said I’m raising lifelong volunteers over here so this won’t be the last volunteer event we’ll be attending. 

But Claudya, how do you raise lifelong volunteers? 

You wanna know the best way to raise lifelong volunteers? It’s simple: by example. Volunteer and let them see you volunteering. Volunteer with them. Take them to volunteer events so they can see volunteerism in action. 

ALSO READ: 10 Tricks Kids Pull at Bedtime

OK, but why would you take your kid to a corporate volunteer event for a corporation that you don’t even work for? 

We should be raising children that grow up and expect the companies and corporations that they work for to give back to their communities. I believe that every corporation should be giving back to the communities that give them so much; otherwise, it’s just take, take, take and that is lame. Thriving communities help businesses thrive and thriving businesses should help communities thrive. 

What the heck is Comcast Cares Day? 

Comcast Cares Day is the largest single-day corporate volunteer event in the nation and is part of the company’s commitment to improve the quality of life in communities where their customers and employees work and live. Every year Comcast employees along with their families and friends get together with community partners and public officials to give some much needed TLC to parks, schools, computer labs at community centers, food banks and many more places.

What did Comcast Cares Day at Sutro Elementary look like? 

Well, it looked like this…

and this…

and this…

What’s the point of having kids volunteer? 

Good question and I think that Senior Executive Vice President of Comcast David L. Cohen shared a good take on it. “Truly, I think young people are the future of our country,” he said. “So how do you get young people engaged, interested, excited about the political process, about the civic process, about the non-profit process and about the business community?…One in five of our volunteers on Comcast Cares Day are under the age of 18, how about that for a fantastic way to get young people involved in volunteerism? Get them involved in service. Get them involved and engaged in helping the community, most of them getting engaged and helping the communities that they’re from.”

ALSO READ: 2-Year-Old’s Video to Mom Proves That No One Will Ever Love You as Much as Your Kids

Getting kids engaged locally through volunteerism is a great way for them to see the change they are effecting. 

"The most important thing we can do is to be involved locally."- @Scott_Wiener #ComcastCaresDay #Sutro pic.twitter.com/Scz8qHH54h

— Claudya Martinez (@ByClaudya) April 22, 2017

Yes, I wrote “effecting” because I mean effecting. When children volunteer they are bringing about (i.e. effecting) change–they are the force, they are the effect, they are the change.

Comcast Cares Day is great, but how else can I find volunteer opportunities that welcome kids?

Here are just a few suggestions off the top of my head for you:

• Find out if your company offers volunteering opportunities. If they don’t, why not spearhead the movement? The least you could do is put it in the suggestion box. 
• Schools always need volunteers. Go to whatever school your kid is at and volunteer away and yes, your kid can volunteer at their own school too. 
• Check at homes for the elderly to see if they have “toddler days” or any other opportunities for kids. 
• Check with community centers or religious institutions for possible options. 
• Create your own ways of volunteering by donating food to food banks, helping elderly neighbors, setting up a lemonade stand or garage sale and donating the money to a charity.

Do you volunteer with your kids or did you volunteer with your parents when you were a kid?