Making Volunteering A Family Tradition

The Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network and The Walt Disney Company are teaming up for the next three years to support family volunteering. The Foundation has been the leading national advocate and practitioner of family volunteering for more than 10 years and provides not only the knowledge, but also the opportunities for families to volunteer. The Walt Disney Company brings its commitment to the well-being of children and families and the opportunity to engage new audiences in community volunteering.

Family volunteering encourages the members of a family to volunteer as a unit. It can be done by the whole family together, by one parent and one child or teen, by siblings together or by extended family such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

It can even be done by people who are not related. When it comes to volunteering, a "family" is any group of two or more people who consider themselves a family.

Projects can be as simple as drawing cards for children in the hospital or as complex as bonding hundreds of families together in a day of volunteer work at a community park. However families choose to do it, family volunteering can help mobilize thousands of new volunteers and instill in the next generation a lifelong commitment to volunteering!

Volunteering as a family is a hands-on way to teach children the values of kindness, compassion, tolerance, community responsibility and good citizenship. Some of the benefits of family volunteering include:

• Strengthening family communication

• Allowing family members to be role models

• Teaching families to make significant contributions to their communities.

Each year, the Points of Light Foundation sponsors Family Volunteer Day with The Walt Disney Company as a way to involve more people in volunteer service and promote the benefits of volunteering as a family.

To learn more, visit the Web site at www.FamilyVolunteerDay.org. Volunteering as a family often creates lifelong volunteers and a legacy of volunteering for the next generation to carry into the future.

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