Volunteers: A Family Affair

At 3 years old, Travis was introduced to Family Giving Tree for the first time. He saw a wish card on a tree at the Westfield Mall and wondered if there was a real child out there who would actually get that gift. The next year, his family would donate a gift to a child in need through FGT, and at 5 years old, he started volunteering in our warehouse. Now Travis is gearing up to graduate from San Jose State, and his commitment to FGT’s mission is still strong. His mother Denise thinks that involving young kids in volunteering helps ingrain in them the importance of giving back. “People literally have nothing,” she points out. In a world that highlights abundance and indulgence, it can be difficult to fully understand what we mean when we refer to those who “go without.” It’s an all-encompassing term: the same kids who go without gifts also go without food, without school supplies, without opportunities for advancement, without security. The only ways to comprehend the depth of that inequality are to either live it, or involve yourself in counteracting it.

Karly, a Bay Area mom, finds that volunteering values can be passed up generations as well. She believes that “if you get kids excited, parents will follow.” A child’s capacity for non-judgment can remind adults of one of the core values of volunteering: unconditional support. In our day-to-day lives, we fall into patterns of judgement and categorization. The phenomenon of dividing the disenfranchised into those deserving aid and those undeserving has been well documented in American history, and persists in our popular imagination. Volunteering provides context for difficult conversations that challenge that idea at a critical age. One of our volunteers, Liza, brought her 13 year-old, Anna, to help at our Holiday Warehouse. When choosing between which gift to give to the child, Anna got in the habit of asking herself, “if it were me, which gift would I want?” She embraced the opportunity for empathetic connection with someone she didn’t even know, and possibly would never meet. She was able to compare her experience and wishes to that of another child’s. She didn’t ask “What gift do I think this child deserves?” or “How likely is it that this kid has earned this gift?”

Volunteerism brings people together; it allows us to suspend judgment and thus give fully and freely of our time and other resources. It allows us the chance to go beyond imagining a better world towards realizing the possibility for it.

If you have any stories about volunteering with FGT that you’d like to share, reach out to Lynn at lynn@fgt.org.