by Michele Reiner

Recently, my son’s kindergarten class learned about hunger.

They discussed what it might be like without enough food (bad) and how they could help (share lunches).

Tying the lesson to both academics and ‘doing good’ the teachers asked that students earn money at home doing special chores and join together to make a contribution to an organization focused on ending hunger.

The kids also made graphs and charts showing who did what to raise money and contrasted their results.

I was glad they did this.

In addition to fundraising though, I wanted my son to do some hands-on service.

I wasn’t sure what, so I began at Pebble Tossers for some inspiration and links to projects kids can do.

After exploring I found the Open Door Community; literally a place we drive by almost every day.

What I learned was they are a residential community dismantling racism, sexism and heterosexism through loving relationships with some of the most neglected – the homeless and those in prisons.

While they do so much, what clicked was that every day they serve 400 sandwiches.

I told my son about this place and asked him “What can we do?”

He decided we could make 200 sandwiches ourselves.

After further discussion though, we thought that if we got friends to join we could do the whole 400!

I must say we were really pumped up.

I sent a note out to nine other kids in his class inviting them to join us.

Given the pace of most people’s lives, I assumed we’d get a few participants.

Amazingly every single family said yes.

With siblings, parents, bread and meat in tow, we joined together one Saturday to make sandwiches.

It was a great morning.

The kids truly did the bulk of the service and were excited to track their progress.

The final tally – over 430 sandwiches!

The next day we dropped off the sandwiches.

There we met James, who greeted the children with joy and gave them more kudos than we could imagine.

He invited us to make sandwiches in their kitchen next time.

As we drove away I reflected aloud on how James referred to the people who’d eat the sandwiches as ‘friends’.

He made a point of it many times over and told us that this is what we should do as well.

His point, well taken, was that we served these people as we would our friends; inviting them into the Open Door Community and giving them what we would anyone who was hungry in our presence.

I talked about how important words can be and left it at that.

A week later my son, the consummate builder, found a really cool spot under a tree in the park.

He excitedly rushed to tell me about the clubhouse he wanted to build there.

He ran through the plans with a vision shining in his head of what he could do.

Then he stopped and said, “You know what it could be, mommy?

It could be a house for our friends”. He looked pointedly at me again and said, “You know mom, our friends”.

I think he gets it.

Michele Reiner is a consultant who provides strategy, action and results to her clients and is currently developing HandsOn Network’s role in the Cities of Service movement.