Hey there! It’s Sarah from “It’s on the tip of my tongue…” In a nutshell, I’m a mom of two boys and am addicted to being online. If you’re dying to know more about me, head on over to my blog and check it out!
How does your family give back to your community? Are you looking to find a family volunteer opportunity?
Several years ago, I was finding it very difficult to do any type of volunteer work when my two boys were young. Determined to find something that we could do as a family, (or most likely just me and the boys since my husband was at work most of the time) we decided to do the basic “give-your-old-toys-to-the-boys-and-girls-that-don’t-have-any” idea. That was nice and all, but I felt like my boys just weren’t “getting it”.
Throughout the years since then, we have sorted hangers by color at the local community thrift shop, donated school supplies for children in need, put together boxes of items for soldiers overseas and many other small charitable acts.
It wasn’t until we came across PAALS (Palmetto Animal Assisted Life Services) almost two years ago that we really became involved with something that we were all passionate about. We have always been dog lovers and when we first saw a PAALS dog, we new that we had found what it is that we were meant to do as a family to better someone else’s life! PAALS is a non-profit organization that raises and trains service dogs for disabilities other than blindness or deafness.
After taking some instructional classes on how to care for an in-training service dog and learning some basic cues, we had become “pup weekend fosters.” Now, this was something my family could do! Every Friday we picked up our PAALS dog, participated in a training activity, took the dog home with us, made sure it remained on-target throughout the weekend and return him/her on Monday.
This is our first weekend foster, AJ, as a pup. He’s now two. He will be placed with his client in one month.
This is Chloe. She’s about 10 months old and in her basic training.
Slowly we became more involved by learning more about training, taking in-training dogs on outings, educating the community about service dogs and working at various events to promote knowledge about service dogs.
To find your family volunteering niche, think of what your family likes to do or is passionate about…
-Is your family into sports? Try volunteering with the Special Olympics. http://www.specialolympics.org/
-Is your family into building? See what needs Habitat for Humanity has in your area. http://www.habitat.org/
-Is your family into nature? Grab your trash bags (and plastic gloves!) and go clean up litter in your local park, or check out this link to see some of the opportunites that exist in your neck of the woods. http://www.nature.org/
-Do you have a love for pets? Check out your local humane society for many different ways to give of your time and talents to those that cannot care for themselves. http://www.humanesociety.org/about/state/
If you’re not sure what you want to do, but know you want your family to volunteer in some way, VolunteerMatch is an excellent resource to guide you on your way to volunteerism! http://www.volunteermatch.org/
I encourage you to find something you and your family are passionate about and go out there and make a difference in your community!
~ Sarah 🙂