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Helping children give to the less-fortunate at Christmastime

Several of you asked about this in a recent Q&A, so I thought it deserved its own post.

While Mr. FG and I encourage our children to delight in giving presents to family and friends, we also encourage them to think about giving to people who don’t have as many physical blessings as we do.

Awareness

Our kids live pretty happy-go-lucky lives, and their day-to-day schedules don’t naturally make them privvy to the suffering experienced by so many people around the globe. So, it’s our job as parents to make them aware of the fact that not everyone has the same blessings they do…two parents, food to eat, water to drink, warm clothes, a warm house, and plenty of toys, among other things.

Because if they know, their hearts will likely be stirred to give.

For example, several years ago, Lisey read an article about people so deprived of food, they have to eat cookies made of mud and vegetable shortening. After reading that, she came to me and said, “Mommy, if I ever visited there, I would bring my bank to buy food for them.”.

The Advent Conspiracy videos are a good resource for kids who are old enough to read (and for adults too!).

(email subscribers, you’ll have to click over to my blog to see this video)

And we help our kids look through the Heifer mailings and Living Water mailings so that they can see people in need.

Action

Simply being aware of people in need isn’t enough..it needs to be followed by action (though sadly enough, just thinking about people in need does sometimes make us feel like we’ve accomplished something.

To help our kids translate awareness into action, we try to model giving. Mr. FG is a natural born giver (much more than me), and for the last few years, he’s been asking for a donation to Living Water instead of a gift, or he’s donated his cash gifts to Living Water. This has not gone unnoticed by our children, and without us even suggesting it, they’ve started to ask for a donation to Living Water or to Heifer when it’s Christmas or when their birthdays roll around.

On Sonia’s last birthday, as one of her gifts we gave her money so that she could pick something out from the Heifer catalog. She chose to send a flock of chickens, and almost a year later, she still is delighted when she thinks about how her chickens are helping a family survive. And I’m delighted to see how that her heart is so thrilled to give.

We also have participated in programs that help us get presents to children in need. We’ve participated in the Angel Tree program, which gave us the opportunity to deliver presents to a child whose parent is incarcerated. And we’ve filled shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. This is an especially fun project for children because they get to pick out all sorts of toys and candy to stuff in the shoebox.

One of Mr. FG’s pastor friends runs a ministry that feeds the homeless, and we’ve helped him buy thermal bags for the people he ministers to. They cost $2 each, which is a great price point for getting kids involved.

Oh, and remember my Ebates/Haiti idea? I didn’t get enough referrals to get the $500, but I did get enough to receive the check below.

So, I’m going to send that off to Living Water. And since we had some extra money leftover this month, I’m going to double the donation and also send a donation to Heifer. 🙂 Thank you to all of you that participated!

Do you have any other good ideas about helping children learn to give generously?

Today’s 365 post: The fishies are working again!

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Laura

Wednesday 8th of December 2010

My Ruby (then aged 5) saw the news footage of the Haiti earthquake and decided to do something about it all on her own. She bought some old fashioned wooden clothes pegs with money from her piggy bank, drew faces on the 'heads' of them, cut circles of scrap material with a smaller whole cut in the middle to make dresses for the pegs. She tied them in the middle with embroidery thread, wrapped a pipe cleaner round the necks to make arms and stuck some wool scraps on the head for hair (some blonde, some brown). She sold them to friends, neighbours, teachers and family for 50p each. She raised over 50GBP and was so proud when she sent the cheque off to the aid appeal.

I could not have been more proud of her :-)

Mandy @ Tiny Tables

Tuesday 7th of December 2010

This is so nice to hear! I was raised a giver as well and am actually writing about my Christmas donation at my blog, Tiny Tables. My friends and I are all struggling 20 somethings, but we've all pooled our resources together to give Christmas (needs and wants) to a child who has been affected by HIV/AIDS. We're having a blast collecting everything we need.

Read all about it here, http://tinytables.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-christmas-tradition.html

-Mandy

Pam K.

Tuesday 7th of December 2010

There are several "frugal" ways I find to donate to less fortunate members of my community. When school supplies are dirt cheap in the summer pre-school sales, I buy up bunches of those (5 boxes of crayons, 3 bottles of school glue, 20 Bic pens, etc, each for $1). For about $10, I got two full bags of school supplies, which I donated to the Salvation Army, who fills backpacks with supplies to give to kids for free before school starts. I kept in mind your post when you were buying up so much flour earlier this year, where you said flour goes on sale at this time of year. Our museum has a competition with a nearby town's museum in December to see which town can donate more pounds of food for their local food bank, so I bought 40 lb of flour for $11.90 and added a lot to our town's pound total! Our local grocery store has a donation box for the food bank by their door, so every time I go to the store, I try to find one good bargain on sale to buy and donate to this box. Our church donates clothes to the crisis pregnancy center, so when I see baby/toddler items on sale for a dollar or two at the end of the season in the stores, I pick them up and save them for the month we donate at church. Our church also has a mitten tree at Christmastime. You can get two pairs of one-size-fits-all stretch gloves for $1.40 at our local discount store, so only $11.40 buys gloves for 40 cold hands there! We also hang warm socks and hats on this tree, so I watch for bargains on those year round, too. When you keep your eye out, it's easy to accumulate LOTS of things for not much money to keep less fortunate children and families well supplied, fed, and warm!

Fudgie

Tuesday 7th of December 2010

That is what I learned in church. Do onto others as you would have done to you. The Toys for Tots program is good too. Congratulations on the E bates. That should help with gifts. Take care.

Molly

Tuesday 7th of December 2010

Dear Readers of the Frugal Girl: Thank you for commenting. I learn a lot from you.

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