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When Craig Kielburger was a kid, his mother would talk to homeless people on the street, which used to embarrass him and his brother Marc.
“She would stop, ask them their name, where they were from, how long they had been on the street,” recalls Kielburger. “It was nothing overly dramatic, but Marc and I would always be racing ahead. She would literally pull us into the conversation.”
It wasn’t until years later, after Craig and his brother had started an international charity called Free the Children, which has built more than 650 schools and school rooms around the world, that he realized the sense of service he had was the direct impact of his mother’s chats.
The Small Things
“Parents think it’s the big things,” says Kielburger, 30, whose 18-year-old non-profit has also provided more than a million people with clean water and shipped $16 million worth of medical supplies around the world. “I think it’s the small things—modeling behavior and creating those teachable moments—that have such an enormous impact on people’s lives.” Interestingly, when Kielburger first interviewed his parents for a book about this very topic, The World Needs Your Kid: How to Raise Children Who Care and Contribute, his mother was hard-pressed to recall ways she may have influenced her sons’ future activism.
In an age when children are bombarded with messages that they are the center of the universe, when the annual school portrait is rendered irrelevant by curated galleries of Facebook “selfies,” how can parents instill a sense of service in their children—a social conscience that goes deeper than dutifully completing community service hours mandated by their high school?
Keep newspapers open on the kitchen table; talk to your kids about what’s going on in the world; encourage, but don’t lead, their activism; and let their passions dictate where they want to channel their energy, advised several parents of youngsters who serve with a capital S.
Model Caring
Like Kielburger’s mother, Sharlene Dewitz is unsure of what she did to produce a 10-year-old who would read an article in her local Orlando, Florida, newspaper about an economically distressed town, then decide that she had to collect books for its youngest readers.
“Maybe she learned it by example,” says Dewitz, who volunteers full-time with her daughter’s charity, Just 1 Book, which has distributed well over 150,000 books to needy communities. “I was a volunteer caretaker for a neighbor who had a stroke for a year. I make a dish when someone’s sick. Your kids watch you.”
A Family Affair
For Zach Certner’s family, giving back was woven tightly into the fabric of family life. Certner and his older brother, Matt, co-founded Special Needs Athletic Programs, or SNAP—a non-profit that provides sports, social, arts, and other opportunities to special-needs children, particularly those with autism.
Their New Jersey synagogue’s service days were family affairs, when Certner’s parents, together with their three boys, would do things like collect food outside of a grocery store. Every family trip abroad included a visit to the local orphanage, where they distributed gifts and spent time with the kids. Hanukah was a time for giving presents to those with little, never receiving them, and Certner’s parents made sure the boys bought the presents.
“That is the key thing,” says Sandy, Certner’s mother. It can’t be parents doing it. It has to be something that the kids are part of.”
Zach Certner was recently one of 10 teen winners of the prestigious Prudential Spirit of Community Award.
Let the Kid Drive
It’s also the parents’ duty to enable, but not direct, according to those interviewed. “For the most part, we followed our child’s lead,” says Stacy Stagliano, whose daughter Katie started Katie’s Krops at age 9, after growing a 40-lb. cabbage and using it to feed many people at a soup kitchen. Today, Katie’s witnessing the power of growing food has blossomed into a South Carolina-based organization that boasts 61 youth-run gardens in more than 25 states, feeding poor people all over the country.
Katie’s activism even predated her cabbage epiphany, according to her mother. “There was a huge drought in our area, and she was watching the news and saw a nearby lake that was bone-dry. We decided we would take a ride and explore it,” recalls her mother. Katie was shocked by the dead fish and cracked earth and began investigating ways to conserve water. “She wrote a long letter to her headmaster, telling him the things the school should be doing to conserve water. He implemented a lot of her ideas,” says Stagliano.
Stagliano, like other parents, says that what Katie receives from her good works far exceeds what she gives. “She has such an appreciation for the world at large now, and for agriculture, what farmers go through, the environment, and the importance of taking care of it. Her work has also taught her public speaking and writing skills and how fortunate and blessed she is.”
By Vicki Ritterband
The post The Seed of Giving: How Parents Can Instill A Sense of Service appeared first on TeenLife.