Today’s post comes from Jenny Friedman, Executive Director of Doing Good Together.

Family Volunteer Day is Saturday, November 17. With the holidays around the corner, it’s a great time to latch onto the seasonal spirit and decide to become a volunteering family. Yes, it means putting one more thing on your burgeoning to-do list. But the multiple benefits that “giving back” activities can have for children, families and communities have made me passionate about families spending time together, building a better world, one small project at a time.

Consider: powerful new research confirms that by giving to others we can improve our own—and our children’s—mental and physical health, life satisfaction, longevity and success. “Giving,” says one researcher, “is the most potent force on the planet. [It] shines a protective light over the entire life span.”

If you’re hesitant to add a new commitment to your family’s overscheduled life, you’ll see below that even a couple hours a month makes a difference. No matter how old your children – or how much time you can spare – you and your kids have the power to make a difference in someone else’s life. Here are five simple ideas for getting started.

1. Choose a kitchen-table service activity. These are small, doable projects that can be completed at home – things like writing cards for children with chronic illnesses, making pet toys for an animal shelter or coloring pictures for the elderly. You can find dozens of these projects in “recipe” format at bigheartedfamilies.org. Even these simple projects can start a conversation with children about the importance of reaching out, conversations that can have a lifelong impact. (Each Big-Hearted Families project comes with reflection questions to jumpstart your chats.)
2. “Adopt” a local food pantry or shelter. Decorate a grocery box (or bag) and put it in a conspicuous place in your kitchen. Each time you go to the grocery store, choose one additional item (take advantage of 2-for-1 sales) and deposit it in your box. When it’s full, donate it to your local food pantry. You can do the same for a local homeless shelter or social service agency, using your box to collect new and gently used clothing, toys and household goods. If you’re having fun, consider refilling and dropping off all yearlong. Also, ask to take a tour to learn more about the agency and find out about other ways your family might help out.
3. Carve out a set time for service. Choose a time each week or each month to focus on “doing for others.” One mom has designated “Giving Thursdays” as her family’s time to make a difference.
4. Find one ongoing opportunity. When my children were small, a friend and I delivered meals twice monthly to the homebound. At each house, my friend or I would take one of our preschoolers, tightly clutching a meal, up to the door. Our children felt important, and the people were delighted to be handed their noonday meal by a grinning 3-year-old. You can find all kinds of ongoing family-friendly opportunities – mentoring a child, visiting the elderly, cooking at a homeless shelter, fostering animals — through your local volunteer center.
5. Make service part of your holiday traditions. For example, get your relations to help downsize large bags of rice and beans for a foodshelf on Thanksgiving, shop for Toys for Tots in December, and create a giving box on New Year’s Day to catch stray change that you’ll donate later in the year. More ideas: On your children’s birthdays, make a blanket to donate to the hospital where they were born, Trick or Treat for UNICEF on Halloween, and bake goodies on Valentine’s Day to show some lonely folks they’re not forgotten.

Take time this season to start a family tradition of service. When parents and kids volunteer together, they learn that every human being has worth, that we are stewards of this planet, and that the world is a better place when we care for one another.

Family Volunteer Day, a Points of Light signature day of service, demonstrates and celebrates the power of families who volunteer together, supporting their neighborhoods, communities and the world. For 22 years, Family Volunteer Day has been held on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to “kick-off” the holiday season with giving and service. This year Family Volunteer Day takes place on November 17 and is being powered by generationOn and sponsored by Disney Friends For Change, a global initiative that inspires kids and families to take action to help people, communities and the planet.