5 Ways To Teach Children The Value of Volunteering

Charity begins at home and so does volunteering! And though schools do their part in making children aware of volunteering by making it mandatory, how do parents inculcate the value of volunteering in their children?

1. Be the Role Model

Children learn more by observing rather than listening. Volunteer yourself instead of simply giving lectures on how volunteering is important. Come back from your volunteering activity and discuss what you did and how you were moved by your experience.

2. Read out Stories

Catch them young! Read out stories about volunteering, about NGOs and about families helping each other in a community.

3. Sensitize them from an early age

Take them to an orphanage, a shelter-home, a slum, a local school for under-privileged children and discuss how and why the disparity exists. And what one can do to help out.

4. Start with baby steps

Do not expect a 10 year old to start volunteering at a hospital. First help them experience volunteering by participating in activities in your building, arranging clean-up of the building compound, collecting old uniforms and text-books from every flat in the building etc.

5. Sign-up with a Volunteering platform and volunteer as a family

Sign-up for Sunday family activities where the family can volunteer together e.g. A food distribution drive or work towards a common goal for 2–3 months e.g. A toy collection drive.

And thus you have sown the seed of volunteering! Now sit back and reap the life-long benefits of this assignment.

A cool mother of two and #CFMember, Amisha Vora, writes on how parents can inculcate the value of volunteering in their children.