1. Live United
2. Invite a friend, neighbor, family member to attend a school board meeting with you.
3. Organize a book drive with your family, co-workers, school, club or faith community
4. Read to children in your family, at your library, or with a local non-profit engaged in child care or literacy.
5. Purchase school supplies for a local school to distribute to children who need them.
6. Enroll your child in a summer reading program at the local library.
7. Donate your newspaper subscription to a local school when you go on vacation.
8. Allow a high school student to shadow you at work and show them how to apply things you learned in school.
9. Take the children in your life to a local museum, exhibit or play.
10. Be a mealtime partner for a pre-school class to help kids develop social skills.
11. Mentor an at-risk youth at your neighborhood school.
12. Bring a child in your life to a bank to have a tour and open up a savings account.
13. Tutor at an adult literacy or technology program
14. Donate new or gently used professional clothing to an organization assisting individuals in seeking employment.
15. Serve as a greeter at a free tax preparation community coalition site to help low-income families acquire up to thousands of dollars in earned income tax credits.
16. Volunteer to prepare tax returns for low-income families.
17. Contact your local representative about and issues affecting working people in your community.
18. Ask your bank if they offer free checking and savings accounts to low-income families and encourage them to start if they don’t.
19. Engage with a middle school to teach a class on how to save money and watch with them as it grows.
20. Help senior citizens learn how to detect and prevent fraud.
21. Contact your local health clinic to offer assistance in anything from distributing flyers to serving on an event committee to writing a letter to the editor on their behalf.
22. Check into what healthy snacks are or are not available in your local schools and call on others to promote tasty healthy meals and fun exercise at school.
23. Start a walking group for friends, families, neighbors and/or community members that meets regularly at a set time and location. Soon the group will exist even if you can’t make it!
24. Get a flu shot.
25. Buy pedometers for your friends and have a fun competition for who can walk the most steps.
26. Purchase personal care items such as deodorant, toothbrushes and soap and drop them off at the local homeless shelter.
27. Help transport families to necessary medical appointments so children can have proper screening and immunizations.
28. Buy a pair of Tom's shoes - and they will donate one pair to children in need
29. Offer a hand up not a hand out at Habitat for Humanity
30. Donate time to the Make A Wish foundation
31. Become a volunteer for the state
32. Help at Jordan Valley hospital
33. Inspi(red)
34. Volunteer at Primary Children's hospital
35. Help out at the Children's Service Society
36. Participate in the walk for CHD this coming Saturday with my sister Sheri and her heart baby Connor
37. Run for the Cure with my friend Nicole next May (Olivia's brilliant idea I might add!)
38. The ideas are endless...
Think the little things you do don't make a difference? This will help change your mind.
Two men were walking toward each other on an otherwise deserted beach. One man was in his early 20s, the other obviously much older. The smooth damp sand was littered with starfish, washed onto the land during high tide. They were stranded there when the tide ebbed. Thousands of starfish were doomed to die in the warm morning sun.
The younger man watched the older man pick up starfish one at a time and toss them back into the ocean, giving them a chance to survive. The young man thought, “Why is he doing that? How foolish. He can’t save them all.”
As they came near one another, the younger one felt compelled to point out to the older man the futility in his action. “You know,” he said, “you can’t save them all. Most of them will die here on the sand. What you are doing really won’t make any difference.” The older man studied the young man for a moment. Then he bent down, picked up a starfish and tossed it into the water. He smiled at the young man and said, “It made a difference to that one.” Then he walked on, picking up starfish and tossing them back into the sea.
What we do for others who are less fortunate: the ill, the infirmed, the grieving, the poor probably won’t wipe out poverty, illness, pain or disabilities. Nonetheless it is a mistake not to act because we think that what we can do is insignificant and won’t make a difference. Because it does make a difference—it makes a difference to that person. And to you.
My home teacher, Steve, is often called by the local blood bank to donate blood. He has a common blood type and there is a consistent need for it. He always says yes to the request. He says it isn’t a big deal to take an hour from his schedule every couple of months to donate a pint of blood. “What difference does it make,” he says. The last time he donated he got an idea of the difference it makes. A nurse looked at his record and commented that he’d donated thirty-four pints of blood—more that four gallons—since he started donating some years ago.
His blood donations have made a difference to more than one hundred people, since each pint of blood is divided into three or four units, and a recipient typically gets one unit at a time. Without question his “no big deal” blood donations have saved accident victims from death, and helped others recover from surgery and even life-threatening illnesses. And that’s a mighty difference.
Wealthy people who donate large sums of money to worthy causes often impress us. And in comparison we see our contributions as minuscule. Our donations are smaller, but they are still important. Small amounts given consistently and combined with hundreds or thousands of other small but regular contributions make a big difference to those in need.
I would love to help build a Habitat for Humanity home. Those homes are built through many small donations of money and labor. Any of these donations singularly probably weren’t especially impressive, but when focused on the goal of building the houses they make a difference.
A wise friend once told me that I may not win the noble peace prize but I might be the mother, wife, sister, friend, daughter or coach of someone who does. Who is to say what is trivial in life?
It’s possible to make a mighty difference in someone’s life and not know it until many years later. A teacher (in a Caribbean country) once had a little girl in her class who had no shoes. One weekend the teacher bought the child a pair of shoes. The next year the teacher moved to a different school and taught there for over 30 years. Shortly after retiring she became ill and was hospitalized. In the hospital she was treated like royalty, and when she recovered she wanted to thank the person responsible for the special care. She was told it was the hospital director who ordered the VIP treatment.
When she went to the director’s office, she was surprised that the director was a young woman in her early forties. When she thanked the doctor, the doctor interrupted her. “I wanted to thank you,” she said. Her words bewildered the teacher. “You don’t remember me, do you?” said the director. “You bought me a pair of shoes many years ago. You cared for me, and you inspired me to want to care for others, so I became a doctor. And finally, I was able to thank you for the shoes.”
The young man was right, of course. We can’t save all the starfish that wash up on the shore, but he was wrong to say that the old man’s efforts made no difference. When there is an obvious need, then doing something is better than doing nothing—and doing something makes a difference.
Question # 2:
Why am I so emotional today?
