Parents teaching their children to volunteer at a young age

For many families, like the Liberatos of Rockville, Md., the holidays are a natural time to involve their kids in their efforts to make the world a better place. “It makes my heart happy,” says mother Leslie, who recently hosted a holiday gift drive at their home, as the family does twice a year, for children in need.

The Liberato children, now 9, 12 and 14, started volunteering when they were young, and still do.

But as kids become ’tweens, with a little more autonomy and their own interests, it can be more difficult to convince them to spend their time packing food bags for the hungry rather than making TikToks with friends.

The consensus among parents and nonprofit professionals seems to be that it’s best to keep them excited about being of service, while making the volunteer opportunity something kids personally care about. And if they make it a social occasion by inviting friends along, even better.

Volunteering as a family can be a perfect way to instill kindness and community service as a core family value. It also empowers children to make an impact at a time when our communities need that help the most, and kids are feeling anything but empowered, thanks to the pandemic that has left so many of them depressed and anxious.

“It’s actually kind of fun if you don’t think about it like work,” says Kaylin Liberato, 12, who enjoys doing the prep and the setup for the annual projects her family takes on to raise money for Tree House Child Advocacy Center of Montgomery County in Rockville, which supports childhood survivors of abuse and neglect. “It makes me happy because I know I’m helping kids that need it.”

“Small kids desire to be useful and have purpose,” says Rudi Rudolph of Baltimore, a lifelong volunteer and nanny, who has taken young friends to volunteer with her. “I have noticed that preteens want to be accepted by their peers. … The idea of being motivated or altruistic seems to wane for a short period of time. From my experience, 10- to 13-year-olds volunteer if their friends do.”

For older kids, the key is to “teach them the importance of doing things for other people, treating other people with dignity,” says Melissa Hudson, the director of the Jewish Volunteer Center for Florida’s Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County in West Palm Beach. “With ’tweens, they’re caught up in social media and what is cool. So this can be a way to come back to earth, even for five minutes, to acknowledge what is important in the world. It sinks in there, and they’ll remember it.”

One point for adult caregivers to remember: The holidays are a good point to get kids involved, but organizations are much more desperate for help at different times during the year.

In fact, “it’s the middle of the summer where there’s a need, when the shelves at the food bank are most empty. I don’t want people to stop doing things during the holidays, but it’s the times when no one is thinking about it that make the biggest impact,” Hudson says.

The pandemic has been particularly challenging for nonprofit organizations, as volunteerism initially decreased and face-to-face opportunities are still gradually coming back. So finding ways to begin and continue the volunteering habit when we need to be masking and social distancing is crucial.

Liberato, for instance, adjusted the usual fundraiser for Tree House to not have “as many people in my house,” and instead made pizzas in a backyard pizza oven.

A personal investment is important to keep kids interested, says Kimberly Coleman, the president and a founder of Baltimore City’s B More Global, which raises money for children to travel to places like Spain and Costa Rica by encouraging them to be involved in their own fundraising. Covid temporarily halted the trips, but at a recent 5K, eight student volunteers helped, including some who’ve already traveled and want to repay in kind.

“I think they see themselves as their own agents of change by coming back to volunteer,” Coleman says. “They feel a sense of ownership over the event themselves, both the ones who are earning scholarships to travel, and the former ones who want the younger kids to be versions of themselves.”

Of course, there’s always the impulse for parents to just demand that their ’tweens and young teens come along. But resist that urge, says Hudson, mother of a 7-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son. “Even if your parents are making you do it, it should be fun.”

Daril Browning, a Baltimore native now living in Media, Pa., says she has kept her sons, 8 and 13, invested in volunteering by switching things up. They started volunteering at a local food bank when the kids were young, and now that the family is involved in Boy Scouts of America, do park cleanups and other volunteer activities. “With the older one, he can probably stop and think about it, and why he’s helping people,” she says.

The Liberatos have also seen their kids’ interest in volunteering adjust as they get older. Now that they’re old enough, the children have become more involved in the planning for their fundraisers. “My hope is really that one day, I can hand this over to my older kids, and it’s something they can kind of manage,” she says.

So far, it looks like it’s working. As she gets older, “helping feels more important,” Kaylin says.