Service Projects for Kids: Teaching Kids about Fundraising

Multicultural Kid Blogs is proud to announce that this year we are joining in the US Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service by challenging our readers (and ourselves!) to take the time to do service with our children. Members are sharing ideas about the kinds of service work they have done with their kids. Don’t miss my earlier post on 35 Service Projects for Kids.

Have your kids ever been a part of a fundraising campaign? It’s a great way to get kids thinking about people in need and the greater common good. My kids are part of a Destination Imagination team, and have chosen the service learning challenge as their main project for this year. This entails that they must:

• decide on a pressing need
• design a fundraising project
• join with a corporate sponsor
• carry out the fundraiser
• present their project

First we brainstormed about the infinite possibilities: raising funds for homeless local animals, collecting bikes, shoes, or sports equipment for kids who don’t have any, cleaning up our nearby seashore, raising funds for a school or library in a developing country. Then they decided on what they considered the most urgent, most important cause: clean water. In their own words:

if kids don’t have clean water, it doesn’t matter about school or a library or shoes or sports. They will be too sick to do anything else. Clean water has to come first.

I can’t begin to tell you how proud I was at that moment- to see their minds using critical thinking and come to that decision was beyond impressive!

Over the next few weeks, they designed their project: they would do a video and set up a fundraising page at water.org so that the money could go directly to the organization and we could publicize our efforts. They also wanted to make a video. Water.org says that every $25 raised gives 1 person clean water for life. The kids decided to try to raise $2500, so that 100 people would have clean water for life. It is an impressive goal for 9 year olds! After researching facts on clean water, they made their video:

Every donor that gives us their address is receiving a handmade rainbow loom bracelet with a thank you card from the kids (another of their ideas!).

They will carry out the second branch of the fundraiser by collecting at school. They made up milk jugs (one per grade) and will collect money all this week. As the students drop in their change, they get to sign the milk jug with a sharpie. We have teamed up with our local supermarket and will give the top donating grade a popcorn party.

This fundraising project has been a lot of work, but the take-away lessons are immense. This group of kids is thinking about a problem and injustice that needs to be examined, thought of what they can do to help, and are following through. Though initiated as our Destination Imagination challenge, I believe that this project has changed our kids’ perspectives, and has them thinking about the world beyond their community, and other ways kids can make a difference. I can’t wait to see what the future brings!

For some ideas on doing volunteer work with kids, browse our list of family-friendly service projects or great organizations to support. You can also follow our Teaching Global Citizenship and Black History boards on Pinterest.

The following blogs are sharing how their families will celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service:

Multicultural Kid Blogs  Pennies of Time  365 Days of Motherhood
Africa to America  All Done Monkey Learning to Be the Light  A Path of Light Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes  Kid World Citizen The Good Long Road

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