‘Tis the Season for Community Service

Submitted by Kaylee Hilbers, President

As we are nearing the colder, winter months and the so-called “giving season,” it is a great time to start thinking about ways to help your community. There are many ways to help give back to your community, and helping your community is also a great way to spread the word about FCCLA! In this post, I’m going to share some fun community service or chapter activities to do to celebrate the season.  

Canned Food/Toy/Toiletry/Winter Gear Drive
Hosting any of these drives can help your community in many ways! You can challenge your chapter, or even your school, to collect as many items as possible. The winning class could win a hot chocolate party, or the member who donates the most items could win a gift card somewhere! You could even challenge another school and make it a competition to see who can collect the most items to donate! This would be beneficial to more than one community, and it is a great way to expand your chapter connections!

Window Painting
This is a service project that my chapter tries to do at the beginning of December. We schedule a date with a local care center, and we use washable paint to decorate their windows with winter or Christmas related pictures. The residents enjoy getting to see us, and the care center enjoys having us paint their windows. Afterwards, you could also do a fun activity with the residents or even just visit with them! 

Cookie/Gingerbread House Decorating
This would be a fun activity to do as a chapter and maybe with some younger kids, too. Decorating cookies together would be a fun bonding activity, and it will help get everyone in the holiday spirit! After you’re finished decorating them, you could possibly donate them to a local shelter if allowed. This would be another great way to help your community and spread the holiday cheer!

Scooping Snow
I know scooping snow isn’t the most fun thing to do, especially since it is cold, but this is another community service project that can be very helpful, especially to older individuals. Many people are very appreciative of this, especially if you live in town, and it can really help people out! Once again, it is a great way to spread the word about FCCLA and get more involved in your community. 

Soup STAR Night
This final idea is something that you could do for both your chapter and your community. You could have members or officers make soup ahead of time in a crockpot and have them bring it to school on what I like to call a STAR night. It gives STAR competitors a chance to present their projects to families prior to District Leadership Conferences and the families can enjoy soup for supper. 

After reading through each of the activities, hopefully you found one that you can incorporate into your community, or maybe this helped you think of other fun activities for your chapter to do! Be sure to tag us on social media because we want to see what our chapters and members are doing! Hope everyone has a happy holiday season!