Paradise Found

Sometimes a service project flops. The good news is that my “failed” volunteer project happened while I was in Hawaii (nothing can go too badly in Hawaii, right)?

While planning this dream vacation, my friend and I resurrected a service project I did with a family-focused non-profit in Honolulu back in 2000. The project, Family Games Night, provides at-risk families with board games, pizza and sodas. At the end of the evening the families take the games home and promise to play the games together as a family for at least one hour a week. (You can download the grant template for this project at www.getoutandgiveback.blogspot.com).

Cheryl, the director of the non-profit teen center, identified six families and asked for Candyland, Pictionary, Jr., Scrabble and ten pizzas. We proposed hosting Family Games Night on Monday evening and looked forward to introducing the project and watching the families interact.

When we arrived in Honolulu we found out that the teen center was closed on Mondays. That was a slight bummer since we had plans every other evening during our vacation, but we could still drop off the games at the center and hear about it later in an email. Cheryl scheduled the event for Tuesday evening and asked us to stop by after lunch with the games and money for the pizzas.

We arrived at the teen center on Tuesday afternoon and discovered that Cheryl had gone home sick earlier that day. The nice guy in charge was completely unaware of a Family Games Night scheduled for that evening but thought it was very nice of us to come by with some games to donate to the center. Another staff member was vaguely familiar with the games night idea but wasn’t sure what night it was or how to do it. She wasn’t sure about pizzas but named a few places nearby that delivered.

And so, more on a leap of faith than anything else, we dropped off the games and pizza money and left, feeling somewhat silly and like we’d just thrown several hundred dollars down a black hole.

And then …

Cheryl emailed the next day – yes, she got the games and money and Family Games Night would happen soon – it just didn’t happen that Tuesday evening.

Thinking about it later, I got hit with a “so what” and a “what if”:

So what if we weren’t there to watch it?

And what if all of us included a service project into our vacation plans?

Imagine the change.

Get out and give back.