Only a life lived for others is worth living.
Albert Einstein
This semester, I was a full time college student, worked 20+ hours per week, traveled to 5 states and 4 countries, and started a blog. I also volunteered in my spare time because I have a great cause that I wholeheartedly believe in.
I volunteer with an organization called It’s Our Little Story. I was introduced to this non-profit a few years ago by a friend.
It’s Our Little Story is a non-profit organization who’s mission is to involve, educate, and empower abused, neglected, and at-risk children and adolescents.
I am so happy to support such a great organization. IOLS works with families in the foster care system in Northern Illinois. I don’t have any ties to the foster care system myself, but I do absolutely believe in helping out these kids. IOLS also wants every child to be able to write their own story, which is something that I believe that every kid should be able to do. So I’m happy to help out in any way that I can.
I have had amazing opportunities throughout my entire life, and I had a fantastic childhood. I wish that I could guarantee that for every kid. Helping out with IOLS makes me feel like I might be able to help make a difference in children’s lives.
Journey Through the Holidays
IOLS does events throughout the year, but the biggest thing is a Journey Through the Holidays Drive and Holiday Party. Yes, of course I want my holidays to be even crazier with a holiday drive and party. Why not?
In the past years, I’ve helped out by gathering gifts and doing small things. This year, I jumped in headfirst. I took over the responsibility of trying to gather donations for the foster care parent goodie bags.
The party is held on a Saturday in a donated space, a few weeks before Christmas. Families arrive at the party and are welcome to stay for the whole event, during which we have activities such as crafts and games, food, a professional photographer who will take good family pictures, and more. There are even pinatas!
Beyond that, we distribute “Santa’s Goodies.” Santa comes to the party and gives out little gifts to each child that attends the party. It’s a big hit. We don’t want anyone to leave empty-handed, so we do goodie bags for the parents, as well. We want to extend this giving, holiday spirit to the parents. I sought to find some great donations to include in the goodie bags this year.
The party is a really great time. Everyone has so much fun, and it’s amazing to see how happy the kids are when they get their gifts from Santa!
For the goodie bags this year, I was able to get donations from places such as Sports Clips, Northwestern University Athletics, DePaul University Athletics, Crystal Lake Park District, a local bakery, chocolate bars, and more. I was ecstatic when my goodie bags were a huge hit!
Beyond putting together the goodie bags and gathering donations for that, I also tried to find items for us to raffle off. Most organizations have raffles and are trying to raise funds. So they sell the raffle tickets. Not us! We actually gave a raffle ticket to each family just for showing up, which is great. It’s a totally free thing that we do! On top of that, their odds were great. We had about 25 families at our party. There were 8 raffle prizes that could be won, so they had pretty good odds.
Raffle items included passes to the gym, a bag of Trader Joe’s goodies, and passes to a theater show or to a museum. I was not expecting to be in charge of announcing the raffle and drawing the tickets, but I actually enjoyed it! I had so much fun at our party.
Volunteering with IOLS has been great for me. It’s opened my eyes to the fact that volunteering is not just something you do in high school so that your college application looks fantastic. I used to go through the motions and think, “Oh, I’m such a good person for putting in 15 volunteer hours with so and so.” Because so much requires volunteer hours! For college apps, you need volunteer hours. When I was in NJHS in middle school, even they required that you volunteer.
Volunteering for something I actually believe in is totally different. When I was desperate for volunteer hours in high school, I spent a week as a counselor at Vacation Bible School. If you know me at all, you know that is totally not my thing! I did it just because it was “easy volunteer hours.” I didn’t think twice about it or whether or not I actually liked it. It was something I “had” to do if I wanted to get into a good college.
With IOLS, especially this year, it’s been really eye-opening. I actually like to help out! I realized that last year when I had such a great time, and then seeing those kids’ eyes light up? It’s amazing. But this year? It hasn’t even seemed like work. I’ve enjoyed chatting with these different individuals and organizations through email or even on the phone about different ways that they can help out. And after the party when I heard that people were excited about the goodie bags? My first instinct was, “Oh, I need to email so-and-so at Organization X and tell her ‘thank you’ again, because everyone adored her donation!”.
And going out and asking for donations? It’s actually not as bad as it sounds! It means I can spend the afternoon driving around, talking to people, and seeing if they’re able and willing to help out this great cause. If you’d told me in high school that my volunteering was going to consist of hours of driving around and talking to people, I’d have asked for another task.
This helped me grow my professional skills as, while trying to get these donations, I was emailing and networking with different people I would not have met or spoken to otherwise. Seriously. In high school, you wouldn’t have caught me actively reaching out to people. I hated talking to strangers or having to ask for anything or possibly inconvenience anyone.
When Loyola was taking too long to get back to me regarding my ticket donations? I emailed this girl three times, called her twice, forwarded her BOSS the email chain (which I know, is sucky, but I had been trying to get in contact with her for over a month to no avail), and then called him twice as well! Being persistent paid off, as they finally got back to me after almost two months and told me they were sticking a bunch of tickets in the mail!
I’m so fortunate that I’m able to help out this amazing organization. Before I knew anything about this, I would never have bet that I’d be spending hours working on something if there was no incentive for it (either monetary or school related). Now I have a blast trying to get stuff together and help pull off miracles for these kids.
I’m happy to report that this year’s holiday party was a huge success. I hope that all of the foster care families had as great of a time as I did, and I can’t wait til next year!
One final note, if you read this and you’re interested in helping out IOLS either by donating or volunteering, we can always use help, so please check out itsourlittlestory.org for more information!
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