When my kids talk about what they’re thankful for, they often mention our house. It isn’t because our house is anything special. It’s because they helped build 12-by-25-feet homes for families of six in Juarez, Mexico, giving a bit of perspective to the 2,100 square feet of space with electricity and running water that the four of us call home.
Like so many great adventures, our decision to take our boys, ages 5 and 8 at the time, on their first mission trip was a gut feeling we just went with. We’d done other local volunteer projects with them—taking sack lunches to the homeless in our neighborhood, petting the cats at the SPCA, and delivering coats to a group that works with impoverished families. This seemed the next logical step.
Yes, our children’s grandparents and some of our friends thought we were nuts and perhaps a little reckless to take our young children to Juarez. Back then, though, it was just a big city in a developing country. You had to be careful, but there weren’t daily reports of drug murders like we hear now. Still, this wasn’t stocking peanut butter in a local food pantry.
And that’s the point.
“Kids right now are a little bit self-absorbed, and parents are concerned about materialism and consumerism,” says Heather Jack, executive director of the Boston-based website The Volunteer Family (thevolunteerfamily.org). “That was something that I was worried about—that my kids had so much and other people didn’t. But how can you teach that to them in a way that’s appropriate?”
My answer? Let them play the parachute game with kids in a one-room school in rural Mexico. Let them mix concrete in the street with a shovel, water and some local know-how. Let them play after-school soccer in the street. Let them see a father cry as he moves his wife and three children into a home we couldn’t imagine living in. Let them see happy children who aren’t defined by their circumstances.
Getting more than you give
This isn’t just a selfless endeavor. Children who go on such trips may pick up a language, learn how to be a leader and develop a skill. A 2003 report published by the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas says kids between the ages of 5 and 14 are an under-utilized volunteer force. The study reports children who volunteer: are less likely to be involved in at-risk behaviors by volunteering just one hour a week; have better self-confidence, moral reasoning and self-esteem; and are more likely to volunteer or be involved with social justice issues as adults.
Such opportunities, especially ones that involve travel, are difficult to find. Even families who belong to a church may have trouble joining up with a trip for anyone younger than middle school. But kid-friendly programs can be found (or created). While they may sound more intimidating, international trips often are easier because you don’t have to deal with the liability issues that spook many U.S. non-profits from offering such opportunities.
Aside from the issue of liability, adults simply don’t give children enough credit for what they actually can do. Children like to do real work. And, let’s be honest, getting a 7-year-old to do something often is easier than asking a teenager.
“That is something that has always surprised me,” Jack says. “When you give them a job, they’ll just jump right in. It’s amazing to see what they actually can do when you entrust them with that.”
The world as a child sees it
When I asked my older son, Noah, what he thought about how the kids in Juarez lived, he said they were lucky. What I saw as underdeveloped and under-supervised he saw as freedom he would never have as a child in urban Dallas.
Clare and Steve Stein took their boys to Juarez in 2003. At the time, Patrick was 6, Michael 3.
“I knew that through most of their childhood, they were going to be exposed to a sheltered, upper-middle-class existence,” Clare Stein says. “We wanted an awareness that there were other ways of living far different from how we lived. It was an opportunity for them to get out of their comfort zone of people who look just like them and know just what they know. They flew kites with some local boys in a prison parking lot. They just saw these kids as fellow children. They didn’t feel sorry for them.”
Turns out, Patrick and Noah left Juarez with the same impression. As the Steins drove home across West Texas, they asked their boys if they had any thoughts about what they’d seen. Patrick offered this, remembering one family’s not-so-solid wooden outhouse: “The kids there are lucky. When they’re peeing, they can look at chickens.”
The benefits of a childhood of service
Michael, 11, recently went on a family trip to Arkansas where he worked with the homeless and took a tour of Heifer International. Patrick, now a freshman in high school, has gone on trips in New Orleans and Belize.
“Patrick definitely remembers it,” Clare says about that first family trip. “Once, we were driving along the road at Christmas and somebody had a Rudolph nose and antlers on their car. He said, ‘That’s just ridiculous. They have antlers on their car and there are people without enough to eat.’ We had to force him to get a cell phone. He has an awareness.”
Brent Barry and Susan Cox took their daughter, Hannah, on a trip across the border when she was just 2. They went back a couple of years later, when their son Ian was a toddler. This summer, the Barrys loaded up their kids—now 11 and 13—and went to Kenya with Meds for Africa (medsforafrica.org).
“I wanted them to see a different culture and see people who were in poverty,” Barry says. “I want them to see there’s not a middle class everywhere and to develop empathy at an early age. And to be thankful for what they have.”
Of course, Hannah and Ian were too young to remember specifics of those first trips to Juarez. So why take them at such a young age?
“A lot of times, people don’t remember the exact experience, but they do remember the feeling,” Barry says. “My hope was that they remembered the feeling of serving and the feeling of being with others. And I think they did. They were not afraid to go to Kenya.”
Barry is the pastor of NorthPark Presbyterian Church, so such experiences come naturally to him and his family. But this type of travel is as much a part of his parenting as it is his profession.
“My kids have their issues, but being empathetic toward others is not one of them,” Barry says. “Halfway through this trip to Kenya, they started taking just enough food on their plate. They saw people who had one meal a day. Realizing what other people go through and struggle with—things like food and water—creates compassion and makes you thankful. We all need those experiences.”
Jack was thinking ahead about such opportunities when her daughter was a baby. Frustrated with the options available for families and young children, she started The Volunteer Family in 2003. The organization now connects about 30,000 non-profit organizations in 40 states to about 20,000 registered users and is a great resource for families looking for volunteer opportunities.
Many non-profits are reluctant to involve families. But Jack is working to change that. In the meantime, many parents are striking out on their own.
Andrea Loubier took her sons Henry and Ben, ages 8 and 6, to Spirit Horse Therapeutic Center in Corinth, Texas, for a weekend this past June. Their main task: moving small rocks from one place to another. Not busywork—even little kids won’t fall for that—but to clear the field of rocks. Loubier wanted to expose her children to the act of volunteering, showing them how “many hands can make short work for a worthy cause.” And those little hands did.
I took a family trip down to Morning Glory Ranch, another therapeutic horse ranch near Houston, when my boys were 9 and 12. It was over 100 degrees every day, and there was much frolicking in the sprinklers and laughter as they rode the horses in the pond. But Noah was sore from tearing down a bridge over the ranch’s pond and unusually serious as he led a horse ridden by a child with cerebral palsy. By the end of the day, Sawyer had about as much paint on him as the hitching posts he and his buddies were updating.
Since then, I’ve been to Rwanda and El Salvador without my family. They were great trips, and I got to do more work than I did when I tried this with a 5-year-old. But I missed the element a child brings to such experiences—the element that sees the beauty in a wooden outhouse and the freedom of a soccer game in the street.
“It’s one thing to talk about it and understand it intellectually,” Barry says. “It’s another thing to experience it in your body, to have to experience the closeness of a homeless person and dealing with the fear that creates, but also to realize they’re another human being. That’s how you develop empathy.”
