{How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist ~ February}

February~ Use Your Family

If you are just joining us on our year long journey this is a glimpse into one of my personal goals to instill the importance of philanthropy into my two oldest children through easy and simplistic ways.  

 To accomplish our goal we are using

 Nicole Bouchard Boles book~ "How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist"  as our guide and we will use one of the suggested strategies in the corresponding chapter for that month. For previous posts please see {here and here}

February was 'use your body' and the kids choose to do "Hands-On Service" so we searched a local non profit through the Volunteer San Diego website. I pursued several orginazations and found that younger children were very limited in their ability to serve and then we came upon the San Diego Food Bank who had very flexible volunteer age requirements of 6 and up which was wonderful!  

 This is our photo journal of completing our volunteer service at the Food Bank and another valuable lesson about giving back to the community and the importance of philanthropy! 

We arrived at the food bank ready to work, signed in with the front desk, and met Ian McHenry who helped show us our job for the day!

Ian was great with the kids and took time to explain their job of sorting non perishable food items into their specific categories 

We got started by pulling items from the main bins...

Checking the expiration dates...

and then taking the items and placing them in boxes set up on the outer perimeter which were designated with specific categories.

While at the food bank I realized that we were sorting some of the food drive items from our local grocer; Von's, which we had donated so I explained to the kids one of them could be ours and now were we here sorting them on their second stop before distribution to needy families which I thought was really great! 

The kids both worked really hard and with the help of our other volunteers we did over 10 pallets with thousands of food items for needy people!!

The day ended with a stop in the food banks gigantic freezer that was minus 15 below which the kids loved!  I want to say a huge thank you to the San Diego Food bank and employees for all the hard work done each day for our community and for the amazing experience at their facility which really inspired my children and encourage them on their journey to becoming everyday philanthropists!!