Though they’ve been married for four years now, they’ve actually known each other for years. His family lived across the street from her cousin’s house and they rode bikes sometimes as children. They met again in college through Jenica’s cousin Amanda and hung out together for a while before Tyler asked her out on a date.

It was, in part, Tyler’s recent imitation of that first invitation to Jenica, the reason why she entered him and introduced him to Mom It Forward. She said:

Tyler is my husband and I chose him to be my permanent Valentine year after year because he is such a fun buddy to have around! He constantly surprises me with new, funny things to make me laugh. For example, last Saturday he called me and said, “Hi, this is Tyler Parcell, from your church. I wanted to know if you wanted to go out on a date with me tonight? Um, I get hungry around 7 normally, so do you want to go out to dinner with me then? I can pick you up.” The whole time he played like he was asking me out for the first time. He ended the call, and I thought that he would go back to being my normal husband so I stayed on the line and expected him to keep talking but he had actually hung up! I love that he always keeps me on my toes and that we can have fun doing anything.

These days, Tyler is an insurance agent and Jenica is an account manager. His attitude of willingness to try new things, combined with a strong sense of motivation and a knack for always looking for the good in things, brings positivity to their home. Jenica knows that this will make a difference in the lives of their children as they follow the example of their father of having the courage to try new things.

What special person is making a difference in your life?

10 Ways to Serve by Washing

1. Google whether or not your favorite body wash is manufactured by a company that does animal-testing, or look at this list to find companies that don’t.
2. Offer to wash some of the toys in your church’s or community center’s nursery or day care.
3. Donate $1 to Share Your Soles, enough money for them to wash 30 pairs of donated shoes, which they then send to impoverished countries where shoes are a luxury.
4. Wash out some cottage cheese containers, cut a quarter-sized hole in the lids and put them on the containers, then gather some fuzzies and a few toddlers or preschoolers, and let them have fun stuffing the fuzzies into the containers. (Idea: Pinterest)
5. Visit ProjectLaundryList.org to find out how best to cold-wash or line-dry your clothes to save energy.
6. Wash your neighbor’s car or the outside of one of their windows.
7. Put six quarters in the coin dispenser of your nearest self-serve car wash.
8. Host a reverse garage sale for your neighborhood: gather their used items, wash them, and take them to your local Salvation Army.
9. Donate $5 to Ms. Jimenez’s classroom at Validus Prep Academy in an impoverished area of New York City, so that she can buy a washing machine and dryer for her students, many of whom don’t have access to them at home.
10. Sew a pillowcase, wash, and dry. Put it in a ziploc bag and send to ConKerr Cancer.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.
• Enter to win this week’s giveaway.
• Join #gno this Tuesday and this Wednesday on Twitter to connect with other Mom It Forward moms about the challenge.

What fun ways can you serve others this week?

My boys start the scouting program at the age of eight and move through the various rank advancements until they receive their Eagle Scout Award. This usually happens around the age of 15-18.

My oldest son is 17 years old. He earned his eagle when he was 15 years old. One of the last things you do to earn your Eagle is to do a 10 hour Leadership Service Project. This takes not only organization, but a lot of support from your leaders, friends, and family.

The project plan must be approved by a unit , committee, and district leader. When choosing a project the scout thinks about who will benefit from the project, how will they benefit, and how many people will it take to complete your project.

When the earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, my son decided that he wanted to collect personal hygiene kit items forthe people in Haiti. He contacted a group called the “Helping Hands for Haiti Foundation” and received all the information he needed for his project. This organization has been helping Haiti for over six years. They have built schools, bought land, taught farming skills to the Haitian people, and many other projects over the years. Right now they were in need of providing the people with hygiene kits and my son was excited to help.

The kits needed to include several things; toothbrushes, tooth paste, soap bars, towels, and combs. My son’s goal was to assemble 100 hygiene kids. He distributed over 300 fliers around the neighborhood in hopes that we could collect enough items to reach his goal. The project took just over a week to complete. 

Together with his family and scout group my son collected enough items to make 200 hygiene kits. It looked like Christmas in our living room when we packaged all of the items together. The generosity of our neighbors was unbelievable.

We had left over items that we were able to take to our local homeless shelter. This was a great experience for my son and for our whole family. I am thankful for the Boy Scout Program and for the opportunity it gave our family to serve and give to others. I am also thankful for the “Hands For Haiti Foundation” and all that they do to bless the lives of other.

I have two more boys left that are working their way up the advancement ranks. As each one reaches the age to earn his eagle, I hope that they will have the same enthusiasm and spirit of giving as my older son. This was an incredible experience that will have an impact on our lives.

What charitable organizations have you worked with in the past? What are you doing to raise charitable children?

Jill Greenlaw has a banking background. She is married and has four beautiful children. Jill loved being a stay-at-home mom for many years. She is now working for Mom It Forward as the editorial/community manager. Her interests include camping, motorcycling, boating, photography, reading, cooking, and traveling. Put her in flip flops anywhere warm and she is happy. You can follow her on Twitter.

The site was launched only three weeks ago by a network of over 400 mom bloggers from 15 countries—the United States, Canada, UK, India, Spain, Nigeria, Singapore, Netherlands, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Jamaica, and the Philippines—who work with about eight international and U.S.-based nonprofit partners to voluntarily spread word about their new initiatives, advocacy campaigns, and fundraising efforts. The concept that compels MomBloggersForSocialGood is the rapid and wide dissemination of information about the good work being done by, and the needs of, the organizations working so hard to improve our world.

If there were one woman who would be THE Mom Making a Difference, it would be Jennifer James, MBFSG’s inconspicuous founder. She wrote, in 2010:

I, for one, admittedly have not been the type of blogger who concentrates on huge issues that plague our planet because in all honesty I feel too small to make a difference. I have perpetually been debilitated by the notion that since I really can’t make a huge difference I guess I won’t do much at all. [But] I finally hit upon an epiphany! Global issues about poverty and education, world hunger and sex trafficking, as examples, don’t need to be solved by me. Rather, they can be solved when intelligent, conscious people bring ideas and solutions to the table and then people like me (bloggers) move those ideas and solutions through the Net. That is where the power of change really happens. Similarly that is where I know my power to make small change lies as well.

Less than a year after she wrote those words, she got the opportunity to go to Kenya as a member of ONE Moms, along with MomItForward’s founder Jyl Johnson-Pattee . Jennifer says: “[That] trip changed my perspective on the world and challenged me to do more to help others.” And she has been doing more, along with the all the other members of MomBloggersForSocialGood. In the past three weeks, they’ve:

• Identified 12 areas of concentration: children, clean water and sanitation, communicable disease, education, environment and climate, fair trade, food security, HIV/AIDS, maternal health, non-communicable disease, women and girls, and workers’ rights.
• Grown by 100 members.
• Followed member bloggers on an insight trip to Haiti to observe Heart of Haiti artisans at work. These sponsored trips get MBFSG bloggers involved on “ground-level.”

Jennifer started MBFSG, but its power comes in the collective voice, the collective call to action, spread over 500 other blogs all over the world. That can’t help but make a dent in the problems of the world.

What charity work are you involved in? How is this making a difference in your life and the lives of others?

 

My daughter has been planning her birthday party for the last six months. Sometimes she bursts into her very own “Happy Birthday to Me” song. She’s pondered the flavor of her cake and birthday theme. She’s even created her own invitations, but the thing my daughter is most excited about in regards to her birthday party is hanging out with her friends.

One of the reasons kids love parties is because they get to be with their friends. Heck, it’s one of the reasons I love parties. That’s why throwing a party with a purpose is such a great idea. You choose an organization your kids are interested in. Teach your kids to be more others focused, and then gather your friends to garner support.

Last fall, we participated in an national event called The Almost- Sleepover. The Almost-Sleepover was a party held on the same day by kids all across the United States in honor of a local nonprofit in their hometown. Fifteen pajama-clad kids showed up at my house. We baked, made up dance routines, created art for a new children’s wing, wrote letters to sick kids, brought games to donate to sick children, and most of all, had fun.

Our Almost-Sleepover was a way my daughter could see how service and fun can (and should!) be combined. The result of our Almost-Sleepover was more than a couple crates of donated books and toys. In the end, the girls toured the local facility we donated to, and now, a couple families volunteer there regularly.

Changing the world? Not yet. Changing little hearts. For sure.

 What kind of party with a purpose could your family become involved in this year? How can you make your kids’ party filled with purpose?

Can one beyond blessed family move from addicted to themselves to devoted to others? The author of this post shares honestly at Amy L. Sullivan about her family’s attempt to become less me, me, me focused and more others centered. Amy writes for print and online publications and is also writing a nonfiction book about serving others.

Our Season of Service challenge is for you to serve through scrapbooking, but this encompasses not only what you can make with pictures, but anything creative you can make with paper, since “papercraft” isn’t really a verb. Check out these bite-size ideas, and try and do just one of them this week.

10 Ways to Serve through Scrapbooking

1. Make 10 Happy Birthday cards (here’s one version you could use) and take them to the nearest assisted living center, to be handed out by the staff on residents’ birthdays.
2. Do a scrapbook layout on your best or hardest parenting moment.
3. Make a Valentine’s box like the ones you used to make in elementary school, and take it to work or church or book club, and invite others to make Valentines cards to contribute to your local Christmas Box house or other similar children’s charity.
4. Sell or auction off scrapbooking supplies or dummy scrapbook layouts and donate a portion or all of the profit to your favorite charity.
5. Offer to put together a small scrapbook or paper memorial for someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one. Pinterest and SplitCoastStampers have lots of ideas.
6. Make a card for someone who has inspired you, using this quote by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross: “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
7. Create a scrapbook layout about a difficult health challenge you’ve faced, and share it with others so that they can be inspired by your ability to put down on paper or put it into words your feelings about the situation.
8. Grab a bunch of old magazines or newspapers, some paper, glue, and embellishments, and help your kids make scrapbooks about issues they care about.
9. Make and send three anonymous thank you cards to people you’ve seen do good things recently. Once again, SplitCoastStampers and Pinterest are great resources.
10. Volunteer to teach a one-time class about scrapbooking at a foster family agency.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.
• Enter to win this week’s giveaway.
• Join #gno this Tuesday and this Thursday on Twitter to connect with other Mom It Forward moms about the challenge.

How can you scrapbook your memories and bless the lives of others?

 

There are numerous benefits to recycling. Did you know that according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), when we recycle, we also:

• protect and expand U.S. manufacturing jobs
• increase U.S. competitiveness
• reduce the need for landfilling and incineration
• save energy
• decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases
• conserve natural resources such as timber, water and minerals
• help to sustain the environment for future generations

4 Ways to Recycle Household Items

Each community is different in its approach to recycling, but the four most common methods for individuals and families to participate in recycling are:

• Curbside
• Drop-off centers
• Buy-back centers
• Deposit/refund programs

Curbside Recycling

Curbside recycling is the most convenient way to recycle. Over half of the U.S. population has the opportunity to take part in this method of recycling. If you are one of the lucky ones, then you are able to recycle glass, plastic, paper and metal.

Drop-Off Center Recycling

Drop-off centers are located in communities for individuals and families to drop off their recyclable items if curbside recycling is not available in their neighborhood or community. These centers are usually located near shopping centers, grocery stores, schools, fire departments, and other central locations that are highly visible to the public. Each drop-off center varies with regard to which items can be recycled, but most will accept plastic, paper products, and aluminum (find a recycling center near you).

Buy-Back Center Recycling

Buy-back centers buy aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles. This provides individuals and families who may be having a hard time making ends meet with a little extra money and is an excellent way to teach kids how to recycle while also saving money.

Deposit/Refund Recycling

Deposit/refund programs allow consumers to bring cans and bottles back for a deposit (usually 5 cents) that has previously been added to the sales tax.

Household Items That Can Be Recycled

Glass, Paper, Plastic and Metal: What’s allowed and what isn’t?

• Glass: clear, blue, green and brown bottles and jars (no Pyrex).

• Paper: newspaper, magazines, cardboard, corrugated cardboard, paper packaging, junk mail, flyers and/or advertisements, cardboard milk and juice cartons, cardboard egg cartons, envelopes, printer paper, phone books, brown paper bags etc.

• Plastic with the following codes are accepted by most curbside recycling programs:

• Plastic with the following codes are accepted by some curbside recycling programs (check with your local recycling program listing for verification).

• Plastic with the following codes are rarely accepted by curbside recycling programs. It is best to try to avoid purchasing products that have these codes and/or packaged in materials that have these codes:

• Metal: aluminum cans, aluminum foil, foil packaging, food cans, empty aerosol cans, steel, copper, brass, and bronze.

Never place the following items in your recycling bin:

• Household hazardous waste: oil, antifreeze, fuel, poisons, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, paint, paint thinner, regular and rechargeable household and car batteries, thermometers, compact fluorescent light bulbs, bleach and/or other corrosive, toxic, ignitable or reactive materials (find a hazardous waste recycling center near you).
• Electronics: computers, printers, television sets, radios, cellphones etc (learn more about how you can recycle electronics).

Food for Thought

Six pack rings, grocery bags, and other plastic items often make their way into our streams, rivers, and oceans. Be sure to practice compassion when recycling six pack rings by snipping each ring into small pieces and taking plastic grocery bags back to the store to reuse or to be properly recycled. This helps to ensure that wildlife does not become entangled and/or strangled in these items as well as ingesting them by mistake.

What household items do you recycle on a regular basis?

  Tracey Lenac is the founder, editor and publisher of Raising California, an online magazine that highlights elements of holistic, organic, GREEN lifestyle choices along with homeschooling and spirituality.   She is also the founder of Soul Centered Kids in Los Angeles, California, where she teaches soul centered skills such as meditation, reiki and yoga to children of all ages and developmental abilities and the founder of The Souls of Boys, an online store specializing in non violent, non toxic, soul centered toys, books, media and resources for boys. Tracey has a Master of Arts degree in Education and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She is also a registered Reiki Master/Teacher, organic gardener, the mom of two boys and a secular homeschooler.

The site was founded by a woman named Jacqueline Wilson, who had her first biological child at the age of 39. She also founded WritRams.com, where she has the Give Back Initiative.

The Give Back Initiative spotlights non-profit and charity groups, organizations, and individuals working to make the world a better place. Each week, she features a new organization, group, or individual making changes locally or globally. Recent posts spotlighted people like Jason Bass, a man who is running the first marathon of his life to not only get in shape but also to raise money for a Make-a-Wish wish. Another person who was featured was Betsy Moats, who gives an opportunity once a week on her blog for military men and women to share their stories. There are no pictures of starving children in Africa. There are pictures of people doing things, big and small, in their own ways, to help others.

The older you get, the more you realize how truly pressing the needs of those around us are. The older you are, the more likely it is that you’ve seen of loss, that you’ve felt loss in your life, and that you have an idea of what it must be like for those who’ve lost all. You also realize how truly close those needs are. You no longer finish your dinner thinking just about the starving children in Africa, but the starving children in your own city.

To not to be overwhelmed in the face of such need, but to bite off a chunk and say, “I will do what I can do” takes a little bit of courage and commitment. To do something, in the midst of a busy life, for someone you don’t know, takes a charitable frame of mind. But it doesn’t require the moving of a mountain, just an open heart and eyes. And Jacqueline has that. She said, “I resolved a couple of years ago that I never wanted to be a bystander again and not help people when I know they needed help.”

So she keeps her eyes and ears open, and does things like buying a kids meal for someone who appeared to need it at a McDonald’s, and buying bedding for a family in need at Christmas. As she shares examples of kind people and great nonprofits, she can’t help but increase awareness of the problems they are seeking to address. And as she writes about what she’s done, she can’t help but inspire even the most stolid person to action.

What are you and your family doing to give back? As you grow older, how are you becoming more aware of those who are in need?

3 Ways a Parent Can Volunteer

Consider these three tips when searching for volunteer opportunities for your family:

Consider Your Child’s Interests

As tempting as it may be to schedule a volunteer activity you enjoy, look at your child’s interests to help determine an appropriate place to serve. I love the outdoors and a few years ago, I thought it would be fun to take garbage bags to a nearby park and have a mini park clean-up.

The idea sounded fabulous, but I didn’t take into account that my kids would see the playground and have no interest in the pick-up. I also missed the fact that my kids would view picking up trash as a required chore, while other kids at the playground had the time of their lives on the monkey bars.

Pay attention to the activities your children enjoy and combine their passions with service. Does your daughter love animals or create art? Maybe watching a neighbor’s dog or making Valentines for hospital patients would be a perfect experience. Does your teenage son enjoy working with his hands? Maybe assisting an elderly neighbor fix a broken lawnmower would be viewed as both helpful and fun.

Consider Your Child’s Abilities

I signed-up my daughter and I to work a two hour shift at a local food-bank. Two hours seemed like a reasonable amount of time until twenty minutes into our shift when my eight year-old started asking if we would be given water and a snack on our break. A break? Was she kidding? We were just putting cans in boxes and working at a very slow pace. Two hours of sorting canned goods is nothing for me, but the task proved too long and tedious for my eight-year-old.

Think about the limits your child possesses and don’t dismiss things such as attention span or physical limitations.

Consider Kid-Friendly Organizations

Let’s face it, not everyone is going to see the value of bringing a young child to assist with volunteering. That’s why some organizations set age-requirements and suggested guidelines for those who volunteer. Make a point to follow them! Seek out organizations that recognize the importance of education and experience over productivity.

It takes more effort to incorporate your child’s interests and abilities when scheduling a volunteer activity for your family, but by doing so and also searching out child-friendly organizations, your kids will have a positive volunteer experience that will leave your family longing to help others again.

What tips can you add to this list to ensure volunteering with children is both helpful and instills the desire to volunteer again?

Photo courtesy of flickr.

Can one beyond blessed family move from addicted to themselves to devoted to others? The author of this post shares honestly at Amy L. Sullivan about her family’s attempt to become less me, me, me focused and more others centered. Amy writes for print and online publications and is also writing a nonfiction book about serving others.

Since “playing” is most often associated with children, most of these bite-size ideas are things you can do with your kids.

10 Ways to Play and Have Fun With Your Kids

1. Put together some play bags with household items like those suggested by Invention at Play, and see what your kids invent.
2. Role play with your kids situations in which they might be tempted or asked to cheat, and feasible ways for them to turn down those requests or not find themselves in situations where they feel the need to cheat.
3. Play these Dakotah Native American language games with your kids.
4. Play the role of an online mentor for about 20 minutes a week to a young college student, interested in math, science, technology, or engineering. Many of the mentees are women or people from groups typically underrepresented in technical fields. If you don’t have those skill sets, but know someone who does, let them know about Mentornet.Net.
5. Take your kids and some sidewalk chalk to their school playground in the evening, and write in big block letters: WE LOVE OUR TEACHERS.
6. Make everyone, including yourself, get off the couch and play—do something active—during every commercial when you watch TV tonight.
7. Read the requirements for a Presidential Active Lifestyle Award, which are essentially that youth “play” at least 60 minutes a day and adults for 30 minutes a day for five days a week for six out of eight weeks.
8. Role play with your kids effective ways to handle bullies, using some of our previously-offered tips or these other ones.
9. Play outside with your kids for one hour tomorrow.
10. Make at least five different kinds of play-dough with your kids tomorrow (here’s a site with 40 different play-dough recipes), and maybe help them take one batch to a lonely friend.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.
• Enter to win this week’s giveaway.
• Join #gno this Tuesday on Twitter to connect with other Mom It Forward moms about the challenge.