Growing Selfless Children: Volunteering and Stewardship in Your Homeschool
“How wonderful it is that no one need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
God calls us to stewardship and service over and over again throughout the Bible. Contributing your time, resources, finances, services, expertise, labor, care, and more is a mission that goes far beyond benefitting yourself, your family, your church, and even your local–and global–community. Service is a vital part of a faithful life, and a living image of the relationship God wants us to have with one another. Incorporating volunteer activity into your homeschool is an essential part of teaching and demonstrating a servant attitude and a mindset of good stewardship. Check out this Homeschool Living for some excellent resources for teaching and living volunteerism and gratitude.
There are countless blog posts, devotionals, and even scientific reports studying and expounding on the reasons for and benefits of volunteering. But where better to take our instructions and reasons from than the Word of God? Begin with this small sample of verses in which we are called to serve and even instructed how to do so.
Resourceful Volunteering
Strengthen your family bond and lead by example by volunteering with your kids. Real Life at Home describes some excellent ways to make stewardship and volunteering part of your homeschool.
Learning to use our resources wisely and intentionally–stewardship–is a big part of volunteering. How much more would we have to give if we could eliminate the wasted food, wasted time, and wasted materials, and turn all of those saved resources into time to volunteer, donations to send, and money to put toward a good cause?
It can be hard for children who live comfortably and safely to understand the needs of others who don’t. Do we have to take away their security to teach them about necessity? Explore how gratitude fosters generosity by encouraging kids to appreciate the things they have that they may take for granted–whether they be material possessions, opportunities for fun and enrichment, or a support system of family and friends.
In her blog, Laura Grace Weldon refers to the small acts of random kindness she indulged in with her small children as “Guerrilla Encouragement Efforts.” Read through for some of the sweet–and sometimes silly!–ways she turned these small interactions into games that her children could build on as they grew.
The best way to find a need to meet and discover a mission is to ask! Your church, your local homeless shelter, nursing homes, animal shelters, youth organizations, hospitals, community centers, neighbors, co-ops—they all have needs. Ask!
VolunteerMatch is an online database you can use to search your area for service opportunities and volunteer positions.
Volunteers of all ages and passions can find their niche at the 2024 HEAV Homeschool Convention in June! Over 600 volunteers are needed to assist with hospitality, registration, children’s programs, the used curriculum sale, and more. There are some wonderful opportunities to serve as a family, for children to get involved, and to serve fellow homeschoolers.
Megan Mora Fuentes
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