Strong Families Build Strong Communities One Day at a Time
 





















 

Simple Service Ideas

Below find ways to help the sick/disabled, seniors, children, those in need, your family/friends, your neighborhood, and your community.

To be the best neighbor can be simple and lots of fun. When the recipient of your kind act looks at you wondering why you are being extra kind, just say "Be the best neighbor and pass it on!" What a great day it is going to be in Polk County today!

  • Let someone go in front of you at the checkout line or in traffic.
  • Write a thank you note to someone.
  • Bake cookies for your neighbor or co-worker.
  • Pick a person you don't know very well at school or work and smile and say hello.

To Help Your Family/Friends:

  • Cook a dinner and invite a family over to eat with you.

  • Make copies of your family recipes, and give them to friends and family members. You could attach them to a baked item.

  • Volunteer to cook dinner, do dishes, clean up after dinner, or clean up the house.

  • Write little love notes to your family members and leave them on their pillows with a Hershey Kiss.

  • Decide that you will be loving, caring, and kind to everyone you come in contact with today.

  • Write a letter of appreciation to a loved one or family member.

  • Surprise your parents or neighbors and offer to babysit a sibling, relative or friend.

  • Plant or weed a garden.

  • Hug at least three people today

To Help in Your Neighborhood:

  • Take a home cooked meal to a needy family or elderly person in your area.

  • Make and freeze single servings of different sauces. Take a box of noodles and a bottle of juice with a package of sauce to a widow, widower or single mom so they have a ready to eat meal on hand.

  • Bake a loaf of bread (in your bread machine while you are at work) and take it to a family in your neighborhood or church.

  • Take the family to a neighbor or friend's house and clean their car inside and out.

  • Make a welcome basket for a new neighbor.

  • Bake a treat for a neighbor you feel needs to be cheered up.

  • Clean up litter in your neighborhood or local park.

  • Organize a food or clothing drive in your neighborhood or school to benefit a charity.

  • Establish an annual “Neighborhood Night Out Against Crime” event. Visit http://www.nationaltownwatch.org/nno/locator.html for more information.

  • Identify and prioritize your neighborhood’s problems and then tackle one or two at a time.

  • Organize neighborhood clean-up campaigns twice a year.

  • Give away free flowers or seeds in the spring.

  • Get the schools involved with the community; encourage teachers and students to volunteer for neighborhood clean-ups and flower plantings.

  • Organize a homeowners association or community group and then form committees for projects the neighborhood wants to implement.

  • Help your neighbors with some task around the home; rake leaves, mend the stairs, etc.

  • Organize a block party or community picnic. Ask each resident to bring food, have local merchants donate items to raffle and ask a local radio station to send a DJ.

To Help the Sick or Disabled:

  • Help seriously ill children and their families by working with one of the many organizations who fulfill these children’s wishes.

  • Volunteer at a hospital in your area. Hospital volunteers often file and retrieve documents, help visitors, and visit with patients.

  • Make get well cards for people in hospitals or the Life Center.

  • Work with a nearby hospice. It takes only an hour or two each week and there are many ways you can help: companionship, bereavement support, office work and yard work are just a few.

  • Volunteer at a Ronald McDonald House by helping prepare meals, talking to families and taking care of the house. For ways to get involved, log on to their website:

To Help Seniors:

VISTE (Volunteer in Service to the Elderly)
1232 E Magnolia Street
Lakeland, Florida 33801
Email Ashley Metts at ashley@viste.org or call 863-284-0828 to volunteer.

Meals on Wheels of Polk County, Inc.
Click Here to visit their website.
If interested in being a meal delivery volunteer, please call their office at 863-299-1616

Some other ideas for helping seniors:

  • Play chess or checkers with an elderly person regularly.
  • Lead activities such as free weights, aerobics, stretching, or yoga at a senior center.
  • Help an elderly neighbor rake leaves or do home repairs.
  • Visit with residents at a nearby nursing home.
  • Enlist retired seniors to watch your community during the day. The AARP sponsors the TRIAD program to help seniors help prevent crime.
  • Wash windows for a senior or help with their yard work.
  • Visit a senior center and "adopt" a grandparent, take your pet for a visit, or read to residents.
  • Take an elderly person's dog for a walk.
  • Make a home cooked meal.
  • Bake a special treat
  • Take your family to a nursing home and read stories, sing songs or play games with the elderly. You will learn a lot from them.

To Help Children:

  • Adopt a school and tutor students in math or reading.

  • Ask your school or childcare if they have a favorite charity or have children with needs that can be met through some generous donations.

  • Purchase or make a teddy bear for a needy child.

  • Ask about volunteer opportunities from childcare to sports coaching at your local YMCA/YWCA or Boys & Girls Club.

  • Set up an online tutoring program with a local district or classroom.

  • Take a lonely child with you when your family goes to the movies.

  • Sponsor or coach a local sports team.

  • Organize a summer cleaning or painting of the local school.

  • Get involved in The Guideposts Sweater Project, sponsored by Guideposts magazine. People around the country knit sweaters that are sent to needy children around the world. Log on to http://www.knitforkids.org for more information.

  • Ask a local teacher what supplies his or her class needs most and then donate them.

  • Create handmade knitted, crocheted, and sewn cuddly animals, dolls, puppets, or other handmade toys for children in the hospital.

  • Speak at career day at an elementary school.

To Help Those in Need:

Lighthouse Ministries
215 E Magnolia Street
Lakeland, Florida 33801
Click Here to visit their website or call 863-687-4076 to find out how you can get involved.

Talbot House Ministries
814 North Kentucky Avenue
Lakeland, Florida 33801
Donations of canned goods, clothing, shoes, and hygiene products are always needed.
Call 863-687-8475 if interested in volunteering.

Parker Street Ministries
301 N. Florida Avenue
Lakeland, Florida 33801
Click Here to visit their website for service opportunities or Email admin@parkerstreetministries.org or call 863-682-4544

Some other ideas for helping those in need:

  • Collect clothes for residents of the shelter.

  • Deliver a "brown bag" lunch directly to the homeless.

  • Offer to pick up donated items for your local homeless shelter.

  • Help prepare or distribute meals.

  • Volunteer at a food bank. You could donate food, help manage their inventory or distribute food to those in need. Be generous with the holidays approaching!

  • Hold a canned food drive and then deliver the goods to a soup kitchen.

Salvation Army Social Services Pantry located at 320 Avenue T NW in Winter Haven accepts non-perishable food items. Meals are served from Noon-1PM, Mon-Thurs. For ways to help, call Diana Woodhead at 863-291-5107.

Help out at the soup kitchen at 830 N. Massachusetts Avenue in Lakeland. For information call Susan at 853-2214.

  • Help others learn to read; literacy volunteers act as tutors who help illiterate children and adults learn this important skill.

  • Log on to www.volunteermatch.org and enter your zip code for local service opportunities.

  • Give a toothbrush and toothpaste to homeless individual or shelter.

  • Raid your closet or attic or collect from your neighbors to donate clothes, toys and household items to a homeless shelter or local thrift store.

  • Donate, shop, or volunteer at service organizations' resale stores.

Places to Donate:

Goodwill 600 6th St. NW, Winter Haven from 8am-6pm (no computers, large appliances, or bedding) 299-1486. For other Goodwill Donation Sites log on to www.goodwill-suncoast.org and enter you zip code.

Meals on Wheels Thrift Store 620 6th. St. NW, Winter Haven Wed.-Sat. from 8am-2pm
299-0834

Salvation Army Thrift Store in Lakeland accepts donations at 3915 S. Florida Ave. from 9:30 am-6:00pm Mon-Sat. Sunday they have a drive thru 10am-4pm. Any questions call
863-648-0047.

Salvation Army Thrift Store in Lake Wales accepts donations at 2031 Highway 60 East from 9:00 am - 7:00 pm M-F. Call at 679-9456 for information.

Salvation Army Thrift Store in Winter Haven accepts household donations at 1898 Hwy 17 N. in Winter Haven from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm Mon-Sat. Call 291-5105 for more information.

To Help in Your Community:

  • Decide that you will be kind and caring to everyone you come in contact with today.

  • Repaint a playground.

  • Sit as a member of your city capital improvements task force.

  • Encourage local businesses to “adopt a street” to care for.

  • Work with the local sheriff or chief of police to establish a community policing unit.

  • Have a Yard Sale, Bake Sale, Lemonade Sale, etc. and donate some or all of the proceeds to a good cause.

  • Contact your local American Red Cross for ways to get involved or log on to: 

  • Assist your local Special Olympics branch with sports training, fundraising, and competition planning. For ways to get involved, log on to http://www.specialolympicsflorida.org/volunteers/become-a-volunteer.html

  • Learn how to create a web site and volunteer your services to a small charity or organization which does not yet have one.

  • Work with a local environmental group by participating in clean-up projects & recycling programs, planting trees, maintaining parks or promoting eco-friendly products.

  • Contact your local library and offer to assist with re-shelving books, running children's programs, mending books, checking books in & out or answering phones.

  • Collect used paperbacks and novels to donate to libraries, prisons, jails or shelters.

  • Let someone go in front of you at the checkout line or in traffic.

  • Plant flowers in the town center.

  • Put out flags for the 4th of July in neighborhood front yards or the town center.

  • Become active in your local Chamber of Commerce.

  • Organize a garden walk.

  • Get businesses involved in a crime-watch initiative. Get phone numbers of all participants to notify them of a crime in the area so they can be on the alert.

  • Pick a person you don't know very well at school or work and every time you see them, smile and say hello for at least one week.

  • Engage your green thumb; whether you're an avid gardener or just don't mind getting dirty, consider urban gardening. These programs take vacant lots and transform them into places where communities can grow flowers and vegetables.

  • Work with a local city or state park volunteer program. You can do any number of things—trail construction and maintenance, trash clean-up, flower or tree planting, etc.

  • Get involved with Rails to Trails, an organization that’s creating a nationwide network of bike trails from out-of-service railroad tracks. Visit their website for ways to get involved. http://www.railstotrails.org/getInvolved/index.html

  • Work with Habitat for Humanity, an organization that has built more than 200,000 homes worldwide—no prior construction experience needed. For East Polk, log on to http://www.habitateastpolk.org/volunteers/ For Lakeland, log on to http://www.lakelandhabitat.org/

  • Bring a carload of newspapers, towels, and blankets to an animal shelter.

  • Contact a museum (art, sculpture, science, children's) in your area to find out about volunteering. Museums are wonderful places to volunteer—educational and helpful.

  • Volunteer for the political campaign of a candidate you support.

  
 
 
 
 

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Copyright, Polk County Family Week

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