What Happens When You Teach Your Children To Share
Blanketing Arizona got started years ago when my daughter and son-in-law wanted to teach their chlidren the true meaning of Christmas; the Christmas of joy, giving and sharing.
Every Christmas Eve morning they would take the kids to a local grocery store and let them help pick out all the items needed for a huge holiday meal with all the trimmings, load the bed of the pickup truck and drive down to the homeless shelter to deliver the goods. The kids would help unload the truck and interact with the staff at the shelter and the people waiting for what was probably going to be their only hot meal the next day.
The conversation in the truck on the way home was the real payoff for the parents. The kids talked about how it must feel to be hungry and cold, with no place to call home, having to carry everything you owned around with you all the time and even sleep with it to keep it from being taken away from you. They talked about how if you were lucky enough to have a good job, a warm house and everything you needed and most of what you wanted, it was important to share, it would be selfish not to. And they felt good about the sharing they had just done. The parents smiled at each other over the kid’s heads. The lesson was being learned.
Christmas, 2006, was colder than usual in Phoenix. That Christmas Eve morning, when the family dropped off the food at the shelter, many of the homeless people at the site asked if they happened to have any blankets. No, they were sorry, they said, they only had the food this time.
The next summer, while telling friends about the experience, they decided that they would do something about the need for blankets, as well as hot meals, the next holiday season. The friends said they wanted to help and they knew others who would want to help, too. That small conversation snowballed (in the dry Phoenix heat), through phone calls, e-mails and word of mouth, into Blanketing Arizona.
Friends of friends, relatives of friends, whole schools, school clubs and groups, and businesses of all kinds donated blankets, money, chili, bottled water, oranges, candy, scarves, gloves, even toys and books. Everyone who needed one got a hot meal and a warm blanket on Christmas Eve. The donors and volunteers, kids and adults alike, got the best present you can get at Christmas. The sense of warmth and peace that comes from giving of yourself and your resources to someone who is in need. That’s what happens when you teach your children to share.
Filed under Shared Stories | Tags: blankets, sharing | Comment (1)
Our Website
The other day, I decided I wasn’t busy enough, so I called my sister and asked her if she wanted a website for Blanketing Arizona, she said…
No…
Yeah… you think it will get out of hand?
Me:
Yes. It was so good last year, it might get insane with that kind of exposure.
Her:
I don’t know what will happen if 3000 volunteers come with 6 tons of blankets and 800 gallons of chili…
Me:
Yeah, that could get ugly. Well, never mind. Just a thought. I don’t have time for it anyway.
Her:
Hmmm. Well, this is really about helping as many people as we can. YES! Let’s do it! If it gets insane, that’s a good thing!
Me:
Awesome, I’ll go buy the domains! It’ll give me a chance to play with the new Wordpress 2.7 beta anyway!
Her: Thanks!
And so here it is, www.blanketingarizona.com. It should be blanketingarizona.org, but I’m so used to typing .com, I setup the hosting like that. I’ll fix it soon. We sure hope you like it and if you want to write some content or contribute some pictures or videos, let us know, we’ll get you a user ID and password so you can. We have created a whole category in the blog called “Shared Stories“, its purpose is to recount those million little moments that our volunteers had with those we helped that day. Please, if you volunteered last year and have a little story to tell, we’d love to hear about it. Send us an email!
Filed under How we got started | Tags: How we got started, wordpress beta | Comments (2)