Make A Difference Day: Planning guide for families

What's a family? It can be kin, nuclear, single parent, blended, extended, friends, colleagues, roommates, neighbors. If YOU think you are "family," you are! Volunteering together will support the relationship and help your community at the same time.

1. Find the opportunity

Create a list of Make A Difference Day project ideas. Here are some family-friendly ideas to consider:

• Visit a local nursing home or hospital.
  
• Deliver meals, gifts and blankets to shelters for the homeless, the abused or to families in need.
  
• Volunteer with a local council to help people learn to read.
  
• Take a homebound elderly friend to lunch or dinner.
  
• Drive homebound residents to doctor appointments, to the grocery store or to visit friends.
  
• Arrange youth history hour at a nursing home where older people tell children about their own history.
  
• Coordinate a food drive for people in your community.
  
• Organize a community garden to beautify an unused plot of land.
  
• Ask a hospice what entertainment they would like to receive and work with a family to organize the event.
  
• Take your family out with other neighbor families to clean up the community. Select a nearby park, nature preserve, beach or other public area to beautify.
  
• Help a local non-profit agency with a mass mailing or recruit blood donors by telephone.
  
• Become a surrogate family for adults who are developmentally disabled and include them in your family activities.
  
• Partner with another family to repair or paint the home of an elderly couple or a needy family.
  
• Organize a car wash, window washing or yard day for a needy nonprofit or social service agency.
  
• Organize a community "closet cleaning" and donate old clothes and other items to a homeless shelter or other organization.
  
• In towns where no collections are in place ‹ collect recyclables (paper, cans, glass, plastic, batteries) and bring them to a nearby recycler or start recycling in your own community.
  
• Write or read letters to visually-impaired individuals. Sharing the work The Abbott family of Henderson, N.C., encircles the Rev. Winston Blackwell; they helped Blackwell cut down trees that blocked the path to restoring a church steeple.