Heads up! Incoming Social Action Opportunities!

Found out about this a little bit late, but there is a great event on Saturday in Brooklyn, organized by Kids For A Better Future, a social action organization started and run by kids.  Every year, they identify a group of kids who need help and spend the year advocating and raising money for them.  This year, they are supporting children in Afghanistan through the organization Women for Afghan Women, and their annual walkathon to raise money is Saturday, March 9th at 12:30, meeting at Prospect Park at the Park Drive Loop at 9th street.  You can download sponsorship forms and posters from their website.  I think we'll be there, and will try to raise a bit of money in advance.  It's a great cause and a great organization.  In the fall, we participated in Girls Read for Girls, a youth-organized readathon in honor of Malala Yousafzai, which raised money for girls education in Pakistan, and heard from some of the staff at WAW about the challenges facing women and girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the organization's work there.

Also on the horizon: on March 21st, New York Voices Against Gun Violence, a broad coalition that includes Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Doctors for America and many other groups are organizing a major rally in support of state and federal legislation to reduce gun violence, and in particular to support the New York SAFE Act, New York's landmark legislation limiting the sale of assault weapons, high capacity magazines, and requiring background checks for all gun sales.  The rally will take place at 4:30 p.m., at the Harlem State Office Building, 163 West 125th street.  Follow/like this page on Facebook to find out more.  Having gotten a lot of out of attending the One Million Moms march over the Brooklyn Bridge on MLK Day this year, I'm hoping my daughter and I can find a way to attend this - it's conveniently after school but not after work.

Other opportunities coming up:

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy has their first volunteer project of the year, on March 23, from 11 am to 3pm. Volunteers will help open up a tree nursery, host a community tree giveaway and create new native seed plots and assemble several bee hives.  The event is family friendly, officially for kids over 10, but it's worth inquiring if you can bring younger kids, because it sounds like fun!    The event is at the Salt Lot, 2 Second Ave.  You can register through New York Cares, but may also be able to contact the organization directly.

Also on March 23rd, from 10 am to 1 pm is the "March for the Earth" at the Queens Botanical Gardens.  The event celebrates the vernal equinox and helps the QBG get ready for the coming spring. There will be volunteering in the garden and then a festive march to the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park.  You do have to register in advance, info here.  By the way, as spring starts to get underway (really, it's coming, I promise), there are more and more planting and parks cleanup opportunities throughout the city.  A great way for kids to volunteer and also get out into the fresh air.

Other opportunities coming up?  Let me know.  I'll spread the word.

 

Mom, What's a Sequester?

It's hard not to get a sense of panic right now about the impending across the board budget cuts set to hit Friday if the Congress doesn't do what it's supposed to do, i.e., govern (make choices, make decisions, compromise extremist politics for the good of the whole).  Of course these days it can be hard to distinguish the actual reality of the crisis from within the multi-media hullaballoo that surrounds us, and it can be challenging to distinguish this fiscal crisis from the fiscal cliff we were just perched upon and the one set to hit later in the year (which is really the one from before, which we solved by pushing until later). How worried should we be?  Very worried, we are told.  Weren't we supposed to be worried that time before, but everything turned out okay?  Yes, but this time is different, and by the way we weren't really okay.  Oh, okay.

So now explain all of this to a 7 year-old.  Or should you try? There seems to be general agreement out there in parenting-advice-land that it is never to early to begin to explaining budgeting and saving and sound home economics to children, though there is some disagreement on how to do it.  I'm a bit daunted by the prospect of this, as I'm somewhat haphazard in my own budgeting, but I get why.  When does it make sense to explain national and international budget issues and economics (particular when the way we manage our national budget seems to run contrary to everything we're supposed to be telling our kids to do with their own money, for the most part).  Why not start early?  But the question is, how?

Since I'm not an economic policy whiz, I did what any parent would do: I googled it.  I found nothing particularly helpful about how to explain sequestration and it's impact to children, although I did find a lot on the impact of sequestration on children (bad, very bad).  Seems to me that if something is going to have a negative impact on a lot of children, we should be able to explain to them what it is and why it's going to happen.  It's only fair, and wise, especially if we want to raise children to take responsibility for themselves and others, and to be good fiscal stewards of their homes, communities, and the broader world community.

I did find some interesting resources on explaining economics to children, which I thought I'd share.  The quick fix explanations of economic issues (for instance here, on the fiscal cliff) I find somewhat unsatisfactory, I think because they remind me of most parenting books, which speak with absolute assurance about the absolute right way to do things, and make you feel rather sheepish about having to ask.  I prefer some of the broader resources, which offer a range of options, including books you might read to your kid otherwise and tips on how to use them to explain useful concepts.  Oddly (at least to me), the Federal Reserve has a page with links to lesson plans on how to use children's literature to explain economic concepts.  So, the lesson on one of my favorite books begins:

Little House in the Big Woods describes how the Ingalls family produced the goods they needed to survive while living in a log cabin far from their nearest neighbors. In this lesson, students will define the production function as the combination of inputs that results in outputs and will identify the inputs as human resources, capital resources, natural resources, and intermediate goods. 

Okay, maybe we won't start there, because I just might start to cry.

I like the Rutgers "EconKids" site, which also suggests ways for parents and teachers to use children's books to teach economic concepts to children, but provides a real diversity of topics and maybe less of a hard sell on the homo economicus stuff.  I particularly like the section on Text-to-World connections, which suggests books that will help kids relate ideas to economic, business, and financial situations they observe in the world around them.  There are some appealing books with stories about microfinance and the Grameen Bank (really!) and books about the Depression that explain unemployment and job loss.  If you are super motivated, you can read a research paper by Rutgers on teaching economics to children using stories.  All of this seems to be an extension of the dubious but time honored tradition of using children's literature to communicate moral stories, although it is oddly and sadly fitting that many of 'moral tales' can now be seen as being about money.

So, how are you explaining the mess we're in and how we got there to your children?

Coming Out of Hibernation

Haven't posted here recently...excuses are many, and uninteresting.  It is definitely much harder to think about volunteering and social action with kids during a Northeast winter, when it seems too damn cold to be creatively engaged with the world.  The bears may have it right.  I think I also hit a stretch of being a little weary of this project - not so much of finding ways to engage my own family in acts of community but of hoisting the banner for it, and trying to rally people behind me in my meager way.  People don't rally easily, I understand that, and I understand why (for all of the reasons that led me to start this blog in the first place), but still, it's hard not be disappointed, and think about giving the whole thing the toss.  But I'm not going to (inspirational music swells), at least not yet.  At some point, I will stumble into how to do this well, and that's worth plodding on for.

Here, by the way, are a few things I've learned so far.  I know that the kinds of activities that I'm looking for right now include those that:

• Engage kids and adults together: Younger kids learn through modeling and they feel valued (based on my anecdotal conversations) when they're engaged in something that adults also feel is important.  I felt less good about an activity we did recently that had the kids doing a craft project, ostensibly for a good purpose, that was not designed to engage adults at the same time.  It was nice, it was worthy, I don't think it registered as valuable to any of the kids who were there, any more than the bunny ears project they might have done at an Easter egg hunt.  I kicked myself for not realizing this in advance.  We have really enjoyed the things we've done together, whether that is digging at Added Value farm, chopping carrots at a soup kitchen, marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, or spreading compost at a community garden.  This doesn't mean I don't think integrating social justice and social responsibility into school curricula isn't incredibly important, just that the way we integrate these activities into the daily lives of families seems to make more sense when the activity isn't just "for kids." It's a 'show don't tell' moment in the work of families.  I also love the idea of kids developing their own activities for their peers (see below) but that's quite different from activities that may do little more than pay lip service to the real role kids want to play in our communities, even at a young age.

• Bring kids physically into communal space: We've done a couple things via internet, and I've posted a bunch of opportunities here that involve things you can do at home - 'shopping' for those affected by Hurricane Sandy at Amazon, 'buying' cows etc. from Heifer International.  These are great home-based activities, and I do think folks can actively engage kids in these projects in a way that's meaningful for them.  Still, I think opportunities to get out of the house and interact with others while engaging in acts of community (volunteerism, social action, protest, political engagement, holding the door for the next guy, etc) are invaluable.  I'm not a social media luddite and appreciate the immense power and value of virtual communities and new ways of organizing.  But I want my kid to see people, actual people, coming together to accomplish tasks of value to all of us.  The two-dimensional iteration can come later, once she knows what it stands in for.  Call me old-fashioned, I can take it.

• Let kids set the agenda:  So, somewhat in contrast to the first point up there, I'm really interested in projects that let kids build on their ideas of how to change the world and engage the adults in a supporting role.  This is a bit more challenging with younger kids and maybe more geared to the 9 and over set, but, looking forward, I'd like to understand how to do this well, and how to catalyze these kinds of activities.  I haven't been that great at it with my own daughter as yet, who is seven, and she's been a good sport about letting me pick out what we do and gamely going along for the ride.  But I'm going to try.  Watch this space, and send me your ideas.

What have you learned recently about engaging your kids in acts of community?  I'd love to hear about it.  Later this week will post some new volunteering opportunities.  Send me ideas or links if you've got 'em.

Coming up this weekend and beyond.....

This weekend the Brooklyn Public Library's Marcy Branch is asking kids to contribute a new book and make some bookmarks for kids who are still displaced by Hurricane Sandy.  The event is from 1:30 to 2:30 at 617 DeKalb Ave. at Nostrand Ave.  We are going to head over there, and I'm thinking I may bring a copy of Brave Irene, one of my favorite children's books, written by William Steig (check out this odd video of Al Gore - ???? - reading the book aloud).  It seems fitting to send a book about a little girl who screws her courage against a fierce storm to help her mother, a dress maker sick with a bad cold, by delivering a dress.  Come join us - it will be fun, warm, and the kids can look at books when they're done.

By the way, the Brooklyn Library has some volunteer opportunities for older kids - those 12 and up can be Book Buddies, help read to younger kids, plan events for children at the libraries, help out on other projects.  Kids who are 14 and up with tech skills can be Computer Coaches.

Some other ideas - if you can't make to Saturday's March on Washington for gun control (came up too quickly for me to organize a way down there) but want to be there in spirit, you can join the New Jersey chapter of One Million Moms for Gun Control for a rally in Jersey City from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.  I've written below about what a valuable experience the New York march and rally was for us on Martin Luther King Day.  If you weren't able to make it (and/or you live in New Jersey!), or are eager to make your voices heard again on this important issue, head on over to Jersey City.

And here's something else I found through New York Cares, a chance to work with Concrete Safari do some winter maintenance on their green spaces in East Harlem - there are two work days listed, one on February 2nd and one on February 9th, family friendly with 10 and up specified, but if you were interested and your kids are younger it's worth contacting them to see if you can join.  The group runs a leadership program for youth, promoting healthy living and stronger communities by creating and maintaining new green spaces in East Harlem.

Its cold out there - keep your brave Irenes bundled up!

With Solemn Duty and Awesome Joy....

I wanted to report back on our participation this Martin Luther King Day in a march and rally organized by One Million Moms for Gun Control to press the urgent case for federal gun control legislation.  Last weekend, we gathered with others in Brooklyn to make signs and I spent last night wrestling with duct tape and cardboard tubing to get the sign stable and sufficiently nonlethal for the NYPD.  The morning dawned about ten degrees colder than it has been, but it was not yet snowing - perfect demonstration weather!  I piled the layers on both of us, grabbed the sign, the snacks (forgot the water! damn), the metro cards, and headed off to meet other friends and kids on the C train to the assembly point for the march across the bridge.  A lot of kids, a lot of adults, some great homemade signs, some well-branded signs from One Million Moms, a bloody cold breeze off the East River.

It was a bit tricky with all the kids to hit the right note - they were excited and there was an air of parade festivity with the banners and signs, and but the subject is a serious one, and among the marchers were those who had lost loved ones to gun violence.  In the end, it made sense to let them take it all in however they wanted, to get the hang of it.  They posed for pictures, thrust signs in the air, tried a bit to hear the speakers, and then bounced around waiting to go.

The procession over the Brooklyn Bridge began slowly (there were strollers to be hoisted up the narrow steps), but spread out over the bridge.  As we hit the Manhattan side of the bridge, the kids could wave their signs down at the cars on the entrance ramp and provoke some supportive (we hope) honking, which was satisfying.  By the time we looped around Chambers St., the troops were starting to wane and, well, whine.  Massed in narrow but thick crowd stretching back from the podium at the foot of the sidewalk bordering City Hall park, stamping cold feet and propping signs on our shoulders, we tried not to lose the momentum totally.  Suddenly, though, the sound system switched on loud and the speakers - Jackie Rowe-Adams from Harlem SAVE in particular - hit the cadence of a revival and an empowered call to action and the kids were transfixed, wide-eyed, thrilled, as if suddenly, in some way, they got it, got what it means to speak out, to call others to action, to take a stand.  I may be over-interpreting this, and will check back in with my child and the others to see how and what sunk in, but it still felt, in that moment exactly right, exactly why I wanted my daughter to be there.

With a quick stop off for some cocoa, we made it back to Brooklyn in time to catch most of President Obama's second inaugural address.  I made three kids sit there with me and watch, and I hope some of it sank in.  There was much in the speech that I admired - let the pundits tear it apart and parse the intimations of future policies.  On that first listen, I tried to keep us attuned to its big ideas, and though I don't go in for the trappings of patriotism, I liked it as an expression of American populist idealism, and grabbed this for the kids and their march today:

"You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

"You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

"Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom. "

January 26th: Books and Bookmarks for kids displaced by Hurricane Sandy

Raising the Village is happy to support the Brooklyn Public Library's upcoming event for kids at the Marcy Branch in Bedford Stuyvesant.  Kids should bring a new book, perhaps a favorite, to give to the kids who are still displaced by the hurricane and living in shelters.  They will have the chance to make some bookmarks to go with the books.  It's a little project, but a sweet one, and one that will make the day of the child who receives the book and the homemade bookmark and the child who gets to contribute.                        Make a bookmark for a              child displaced by Hurricane Sandy  Recommended for ages 6-12

Saturday, January 26, 2013  1:30-2:30PM Marcy Library Bookmarks, along with new books, will be donated to families living in temporary housing due to the recent hurricane. All materials will be provided. Marcy Library 617 Dekalb Ave. 718.935.0032 www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org

One Million Moms (+ Kids!!!!)

 We had a great time today making posters for the Rally for Gun Control at City Hall on Martin Luther King Day, organized by the wonderful Brooklyn Chapter of One Million Moms for Gun Control and other New York City chapters. The event will begin at 9:15 at Cadman Plaza Park, followed by a march over the Brooklyn Bridge and the rally in front of City Hall Park at 10:30.

A collection of adults and children gathered in Clinton Hill to make posters, see each other face-to-face after tons of emails back and forth, and begin to talk a bit about what comes next.  Mostly, though, it was about the posters, and it was a good opportunity for the kids to work side by side with the adults.  Rally posters are about the big ideas, not the policy details, and as such they are a reasonably decent way to engage kids, to begin to talk about issues that matter to their parents and affect their community.  This is particularly true with an issue like gun control, where it's important to walk the line between engaging younger kids honestly on an important issue without scaring them.  The posters keep the message simple and true, and we can't ask much more of our communication with kids.

Activities Ahead!

So, apologies for the gap between posts lately, getting back into the groove post-holidays.  I wanted to share some upcoming activities, for this week and the rest of the month.

• The 5th Brooklyn Scouts will be having its first open house tomorrow, January 9th from 6 to 8pm at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Prospect Park West.  According to the communication I received, the group is a charter of the Baden-Powell Service Association, an alternative, fully-inclusive, community-oriented scouting program.  It is fully volunteer run, with a focus on outdoor activities, community service, and the tenets of traditional scouting.  I'm not going to be able to go myself, but hope to learn more and share it.

• One Million Moms for Gun Control will be hosting a march and rally on Martin Luther King Day, January 21st, at City Hall.  More details to follow!  Martin Luther King Day, which is also inauguration day this year, is the national day of service.  Here is a list of some service activities in the area.  I know I'll be headed over to City Hall with my daughter, so come join us.

• On January 26, at 1:30 pm at the Marcy Branch of the New York Public Library, Raising the Village will be joining with the Brooklyn Public Library to host an event for kids to make book marks and bring favorite books to donate for kids currently living in shelters.  More details to follow shortly.

• There will be another trip to the Masbia Soup Kitchen on February 2nd, organized by Hannah Senesh Community Day School.  It was a really good experience the last time we went, the kids were real contributors to the group effort.  If you're interested in signing up, send an email.

We are going to be doing a number of these events, so I'll be posting pictures.  Heck, I may even tweet.  You can follow me at @NancyFishman1.

The Snowflake project: A Recap and Looking Forward to the New Year

Cutting snowflakes

So this past Saturday we joined with Lauren Maples of Bija Kids for "Snowflakes for Sandy Hook."  We spent the morning cutting our paper snowflakes to send to the Connecticut state PTA, which will use them to create a 'winter wonderland' for the kids of Sandy Hook Elementary School, who will be in a new school building after the holidays.  There were a couple of kids and few adults, and it was a pleasant, peaceful activity - actually, I really enjoyed sitting there cutting up colored paper and coffee filters, it was simultaneously meditative and comfortably social as well as we all focused on our scissors and paper and chatted.  Trying to figure out how to integrate paper-snowflake making into the rest of my life.

As a way of having kids connect to other kids somewhere else and express empathy I think it worked quite well, because younger kids understand what it means to try to make someone feel better with something you've made.  It also was an activity that adults and kids could do together, on equal footing,  which is the kind of project I'm trying to seek out.  A few weeks ago, we went to prepare food at the Masbia soup kitchen and that also had kids and adults working side by side in common purpose.

Some of our work product

The kids were not peeling carrots as fast as the adults but it didn't matter: they had something to contribute and it was valued.

Coming up, there will be another trip to Masbia in early February, in conjunction with Hannah Senesh Community Day School, and a project that I'm planning with the Brooklyn Public Library for January, which will ask kids to make bookmarks to go with new books that are being donated to kids in shelters.  I'm hoping to find a larger, on-going project that will allow families to engage over a period of time - although it seems counterintuitive, I suspect it may be easier to commit to working on a project if it's not a 'one-off' on something to which you have no personal connection.  We'll see.

It remains challenging to find volunteering and social action projects that people can do with their kids, and while I've been pleased with the response to this blog, I'm still challenged as to how to get more folks involved.  I will continue to post opportunities up here, and try to organize others, and chronicle my own efforts to make this real for my child.

Lauren and Esme at work at Bija

I continue to appreciate your links and suggestions, large and small.  I hope this new year will bring more activity to this project, and engage more people in the conversation.

Best for the New Year,

Nancy

Snowflakes for Sandy Hook is December 29th!

Sorry about that.  My brain is already in 2013.  Details below.

Snowflakes for Sandy Hook - December 29, 11 a.m. - Noon

So: a small but great project.  the Connecticut state PTA organization is organizing a 'winter wonderland' for students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and have asked for donations of homemade paper snowflakes.  Raising the Village is partnering with Bija Kids (900 Fulton Street between Washington and Waverly) to host a snowflake making party!  The event will be on Saturday, December 29th from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.  We'll supply origami paper and scissors (although feel free to bring some of your own) and some festive snacks.

While we will all be making snowflakes for the Sandy Hook students, we will not be discussing what took place there in any detail at the event.  We will say simply that some kids in their school died and they are all very sad so we are making the snowflakes to cheer them up and to show them that other kids around the country are wishing the well.  Because families have made different choices about whether to tell their kids about the event and how to do so, we ask that you keep discussion about it at a minimum on Saturday.  If you have any concerns about this part of it but want to come, let me know.

Please sent me an email if you are planning on coming  it will help with the planning.  Suggested age is 5+.

On what I'm not telling my child about the Newtown massacre, and what I might

So last week I had been planning a post for Sunday about our experience volunteering at the Masbia Soup Kitchen on Coney Island Ave., and then Friday came and with it the unbearable news that a disturbed young man armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle and two other guns had entered an elementary school in Newtown Connecticut and killed 26 people, including 20 children, six- and seven-year olds (the same age as my own child).  Like everyone else, I've spent the days since trying not exactly to make sense of this horrific event, because there is no sense, but simply to process it, to adjust to a reality where this has happened.  I've wanted to say something in the context of this blog, because it is about parenting with the purpose of engaging children in the world, and helping them understand their responsibility to others and their power to play a role in creating a better world, a stronger community.  It is also about finding ways for them to practice that role, in partnership with adults.  And here is an event that directly affects children, that cries out for all of our empathy, and our anger, and, beyond this sole instance, has brought suddenly into relief the danger that so many children face on a day to day basis from guns and violence.

But here's the challenge.  I have chosen not to tell my daughter (yet, still) anything about what happened at Newtown.  I've shielded her from the news, I've crossed my fingers that no other child at school will raise it to her, and am thankful that she has no regular exposure to the media.  If she has questions, I'll find a way to answer them, but so far she remains unaware, and for that I am thankful.  When I found myself sobbing intermittently over the weekend, I hid it from her.  I have no idea if this is the right thing to do, but it was the only thing that seemed possible to me, because I had no interest in increasing by one more the number of people traumatized by this young man's acts, because once you know this can happen, you cannot unlearn it.

A few years ago, on Martin Luther King's birthday, we went to do a service project at high school, where we got to paint a mural of Ruby Bridges.  In order to explain the significance of all of this to my daughter, why Martin Luther King was hero, and little Ruby Bridges, too, I had to introduce my then kindergartener to the concepts of racism, hatred and prejudice.  And even though it was towards a higher purpose, it felt horrible.  It was not the lesson I wanted to teach.  This is what faces us if we want to foster that broader empathy, and to engage our kids along side us in addressing injustice, hardship, need, in taking advantage of those opportunities to do good.  Knowing how to do that, and when, seems immensely difficult.  I would love to hear from those of you who have experience doing this, and what you've learned.

There are a lot of good links going around with advice on what to tell your child about what happened, and how to explain traumatic events like this one to children in ways that respond to their fears and their curiosity.  I defer to the experts on that.  But I've been thinking about what I might communicate to a seven-year old if I were going to talk to her about more than just her own safety, and her fears and her sadness.  Here are some things I might say.  The teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School were incredibly brave.  Bravery is everywhere and the capacity for bravery is in everyone, even though you may never notice it.  Sometimes, ordinary people do extraordinary things as if they were ordinary tasks, and we honor that.  We don't yet know everything about why this man committed this horrible act, but we know he must have been very disturbed in his thinking and feeling.  Most people who are sick in this way are not violent and do not harm people, and it is important that we as a community make sure that help and support is available for people who are sick and for their families.

I might also tell her that an event like this might have been prevented if it wasn't so easy to buy guns for which there is no alternative purpose but to commit acts like the one this man committed. And we need to hold our leaders accountable for what they've done and failed to do to make this impossible, and we need to raise our voices to make sure that they are brave enough to do the right thing.   I might want to move on to talk about what it means to see guns everywhere in our weaponized culture and what that does to our ideas of bravery and power, and I would want to situate this issue in a larger discussion about other ways we fail all of our children, but I might just stop there, for now.  Because a seven-year old needs to discover the world and its vast imperfections (as well as its glories) by degrees.

What are you telling your kids, and how are you engaging them in your own responses? 

Things to do this weekend and beyond 12/14....

Well, with Hanukkah in full swing and Christmas around the corner, it can feel like there's not much time on hand to squeeze in community activities, but it seems important to me to keep the needs of others and the challenges in the world all around us present in the midst of our celebrations (without being the dour doomsayer in a room full of carolers).  Going to set an example by not prattling on about that but providing (I hope) some opportunities for this coming week.

• Sunday, we're going to volunteer to help with food preparation at the Masbia Soup Kitchen on Coney Island Ave., in an event organized by the social action committee at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School.  There is still room for more volunteers - if you're interested, send an email here.  I will post about the experience afterwards and get a sense of how well this works with kids.
• As I mentioned last week, Occupy Sandy is organizing a day of action on Saturday, with community rallies in the Rockaways and Staten Island at noon, and a citywide convergence on the Mayor's house on the Upper East Side at 5 (bring flashlights!).  You can get details here.  As with many Occupy events, you have to be a bit tolerant of some vagueness around the edges of the message, but the events themselves seem clearly defined.
• Last week I posted about an effort by queensmamas.com, called Family-to-Family which is looking to connect volunteer families with individual families in need, to provide support, help connect them with resources in the community and generally make the holidays a little easier, with the larger aim of bringing families from different parts of the city closer together.  If this is something you think your family might like to do, check out the information on the website - you can do as much as you're able, and it's a way of volunteering as a family that's very personal (which also may be why it scares some folks off, but different approaches appeal to different folks so....).
• If your time is limited and can't get somewhere to volunteer right now, New York Cares has started a Winter Wishes project which allows you to purchase items from Amazon in answer to wish registries for lots of different social service agencies serving kids, seniors and others.  What I like about this is that the range of options is large and for those of us with kids who still believe in Santa and don't understand why we need to buy gifts for other children ("Doesn't Santa bring them?"), buying lamps and canes and gift cards are easier to explain.  While it's not as active as going and doing something, having the kids help pick out gifts is a nice indoor, cold weather activity.
• On Saturday, there appears to be a work project at Added Value farm in Red Hook from 1 to 4pm.  It's not up on their calendar but there is sign up for it through New York Cares here.

Not a volunteer activity but a different kind of opportunity: Disney Friends for Change Grants are $1000 grants to kids ages 5 to 18 to support youth projects to help meet the needs of others.  Proposals are due February 10th.  If the child applying is under 13, an adult has to submit the application.

 Got any other ideas?  Share 'em!

"Opportunities to Do Good"

A friend called my attention today to an article by Dr. Perri Klass, a pediatrician, in the New York Times' Well column, called Understanding How Children Develop Empathy.  You can find it here.  The column looks at what we know about "how and why we become our better selves," noting that "the capacity to notice the distress of others, and to be moved by it, can be a critical component of what is caused prosocial behavior, actions that benefit others: individuals, groups, or society as a whole."   Empathy, in other words, can be that first step in developing a greater sense of responsibility for the world around you, and, we can hope, the habit of acting on that responsibility - volunteering, sharing what you have with those who have less, voting, signing petitions, starting social movements, etc. etc. etc.

So how do you foster empathy and prosocial behavior?  There are, according to the article, a couple of different theories (and some underlying science) about why people develop the capacity to feel for others, and the desire to help them.  The first is that it feels good to help others, and that we develop habits of charity for the same reasons we may develop other habits, that there is some "neurological reward" triggered that serves as motivation.  The second is that we develop social cognition, a recognition that other people have needs and goals.  The two theories are not mutually exclusive.  Taking this into consideration, the article suggests that we can foster this behavior in children in a few ways.  Parental modeling is important, always.  So is taking the time to explain how other people may feel as the result of another's behavior (e.g. "How do you think he felt when you took the toy?).  The author, and the experts she cites, also suggest that you don't provide actual, material rewards for prosocial behavior, but provide "opportunities to do good - opportunities that the child will see as voluntary."

Opportunities to do good are everywhere, and one of the things I found helpful about this piece is that it reminded me that the smaller, individual opportunities can be as important as the grand ones in terms of the development of a child's sense of connection to the world and her role in it.  If compassion and caring may be habit-forming, then there are many ways to develop that habit.  One of the reasons for starting Raising the Village was the conversations I had with other parents about how difficult it was to engage in volunteering and other community work with kids, because of time constraints, planning challenges, and lack of easy access to activities that permit and welcome children.  I'm hoping we can continue to create and share those larger opportunities to involve kids in the work of our communities. 

But even when those larger opportunities aren't around, or life gets in the way, we do well not to forget or forego the little habits of compassion.  In my house, we've had a lot of commitments lately, and seasonal viruses and, well, the recurring elementary school plague of head lice, so finding the time to practice a bit of meaningful civic engagement has been challenging.  But this evening, we spent the time before dinner writing thank you notes for gifts my daughter received for her birthday.  A slow process with a seven-year old, but it proved to be surprisingly enjoyable for both of us, as we thought about what she could say (and spell) that would communicate to others how much she appreciated each particular gift.  It's a bit ironic, I realize, to bring this up, since my very first post for this blog was entitled "Beyond Please and Thank You."  Still, it helps to remember that a please or thank you, or a chance to set the table or write up the grocery list can be an opportunity to do good.  

So, what opportunities have you've found?  What's worked well, and what hasn't?

Things to do, Weekend 12/7 and beyond

Oy, how quickly the weekend roles around again. There are some good opportunities coming up - as always, if you've got something to share, let me know.

For the upcoming holidays:

• Queensmamas.com is organizing a Family-to-Family program, matching a family in need (with a focus on those affected by the Hurricane) with a volunteer family that can help make this holiday season a better one, with the idea, too, that this will forge a more lasting bond between the families.  Queensmamas.com will provide support for the volunteer families in terms of identifying services and resources.  I love this idea, because it's a way to get to volunteer as a family without just sending money or wrapping a present anonymously.  Still, it may feel like a big lift for some.  The registration form, though, allows you indicate what days and how many days you're able to help.

• On Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 8 -9), the New York Food Bank will be in Bushwick (address available when you register) wrapping gifts to be donated.  You do have to register as a volunteer to sign up (but what a good idea), and they indicate that the minimum age is 14, but I expect there is wiggle room there, since kids can be great at helping to wrap gifts.  Check in advance. 

• Where to Turn is organizing a toy 'store' for Sandy victims in Staten Island, and is looking for volunteers to staff the store (and also looking for toys, btw), which will be at 3948 Amboy Rd. in Great Kills.  Where to Turn is an organization formed after the 9/11 attacks to help affected families on Staten Island, and have become a general crisis relief organization.

In addition, Occupy Sandy still needs volunteers for cooking and food distribution.  The kitchen is at 461 99th St. in Bay Ridge, at St. John's Episcopal Church.  They need volunteers from 9 to 5, generally.  The main volunteer clearinghouse and launch site is at 520 Clinton Ave.  There is a great list of locations for donation drop off and volunteering here.

By the way, I'm interested in this organization, Kids Helping Kids, and it's approach to kids and social action.  If anyone has any direct experience with them, can you let me know?  Thanks.

And please, please, please, take a minute to fill out the activity survey here.  You don't have to put your name down, it does not obligate you in any way.  Just trying to find out how this site can be most useful.

How do we Raise the Village - Take the Survey!!

This site has been up for about three weeks, and has mostly served as a bulletin board for ideas and for news of upcoming volunteering or social action activities.  It's been great to see all of the traffic here and on the RtV Facebook page ("like" us if you haven't yet!).  I've had a lot of ideas and some suggestions about where to take this project, and I'm thinking about what to do next.  So, it seemed to make sense to poll folks and see what they'd most appreciate.

Please help us all out by taking the survey here.  It won't take you long, I promise.  If there are others you know who haven't seen the site or the Facebook page but might be interested in this project, please asked them to fill it out as well.

Thanks!

Nancy

P.S.  Did I say you should take the survey?  You should, really.

Can Kids Speak Truth to Power?

On October 15, Occupy Sandy is planning a day of action to highlight continuing pressing needs more than a month post-hurricane and the need to pay attention to who is directing, benefiting from, and participating in the rebuilding and recovery process.  This has gotten me thinking about kids and political action, particularly activities like demonstrations, rallies and direct action protests.  Anyone who has ever parented or spent oh, say, an hour with a toddler knows that children have a remarkably instinctual understanding of civil disobedience and direct action.  Indeed, I once comforted myself as I struggled with a child gone totally limp on the floor of a place she did not want to leave with the thought that somewhere in her brain she was actually singing "We shall not, we shall not be moved, we shall not, we shall not be moved, like a tree standing by the water, we shall not be moved."   As someone who has been hauled off by the cops on a few occasions for these types of activities back in the day, I was impressed.

Still, thinking about engaging kids in demonstrations and rallies about larger issues than whether the hat stays on the head or not raises a lot of questions.  It's one thing to cart the stroller with you to a demonstration or march when your child is too small to understand, as I did a bunch of times when my daughter was little.  It's like bring the baby into the voting booth, it matters a tiny bit to them, a lot more to us.  There's also using the little one in a state of nature as part of the protest, like the Great Nurse-In, or in a favorite story of mine, retold in one of Studs Terkel's oral histories, about how a group of mothers in Chicago got a meeting with a high official who was ignoring them by bringing their children into his outer office, giving them candy apples, and letting them loose.  I guess one might have ethical issues with this tactic, but I think it's genius.

 Once they're older and ask questions, though, how do you engage them authentically around issues that may be fairly complex, as most are?  (If you think this isn't controversial, by the way, check out the vitriol in the Amazon comments section around this book, That's Not Fair! A Teacher's Guide to Activism with Young Children, and see what flips your stomach does when you look at this coloring book).   Last year, we went to an Occupy Wall Street event, and then went to a protest about the millionaire's tax and public education funding in front of Governor Cuomo's Manhattan office.  On the one hand, this was an issue, funding for public education, that is directly relevant to younger, school-aged kids and that they at various levels, can get.  Still, try explaining graduated taxation to a six-year old.  Also, what a governor is.  And a millionaire.  I did try, and she carried a sign and chanted and made me proud, and perhaps a little uneasy.

In this spirit, I've been doing some digging on resources for parents who are thinking about this - if you've got 'em, share 'em.  I like this article, from the website Compassionate Kids, which provides some practical nuts and bolts advice on activism with kids, starting with "Park legally" (there's also a good piece on volunteering with kids here).  Also found this list of issue-oriented activities for kids on a home-schooling site - there are a number of resources for this broader category of social action, particularly for middle school to high school age youth, fewer on the demonstrative side and fewer for younger kids.  Here and here are a few stories about other parents and activism.  Looking for more.....

In the mean time, what do you think?