As parents, we want to raise our kids to be kind and think of others.  And not because of our lectures and nagging – we want them to genuinely care.

But how do you teach that?

Outside of collecting canned goods for food shelves, kids don’t have many opportunities to volunteer and get involved with the community.  So our family is trying something new this year that I want to share with you – a way that we can work on projects together and give back.

Creative Kids and Global Goals

We have an 8 year old and 5 year old who, like all kids, love to create.  They make up their own games, stories, machines, and art.  They transform our kitchen into a fancy restaurant and our living room into a dance club.

Creativity is where kids seem the happiest.  So what would happen if we paired our kids’ creativity with the world’s most important goals?

Back in 2015, the UN worked with 193 countries to map out the most important goals for our planet and everyone in it.  There’s 17 of them.  And they’re called the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs.  Check them out here:

Setting Your Family Goals

While these are still huge goals, they provide a bit more direction than “giving back” or “doing something good.”  These goals can give your family something to focus on – a project that you and your kids can get excited about together.

Here’s what our family is committing to for 2018 and info on how you can get involved, too!

1. Get to know the goals

Start with the UN’s website for SDGs and click on each goal to learn more.

Since we have young kids, learning about 17 goals is too overwhelming, so my husband and I chose 5 and wrote them on post-it notes.  Here’s what we picked:

• Clean Water
• Zero Hunger
• No Poverty
• Quality Education (helping kids learn)
• Life on Land (helping animals and plants)

We shared some examples for each.  Like for Zero Hunger, we talked about how a lot of kids in our community depend on food shelves or free lunches from school.

This started a discussion about what’s happening around us, with our kids asking lots of questions.

2. Select a goal

We asked our kids to choose a goal that they are most excited to help with.

What should we focus on as a family over the next year?

Our 5-year old daughter wanted to “help kids learn in school” –> Quality Education

Our 8-year old son wanted to “build machines to give people water” –> Clean Water

It was awesome to see how excited they were about being able to choose these goals for our family.  Adults make so many decisions, so allowing the kids to take the lead made them feel pretty proud.

3. Brainstorm ways to help

While “Clean Water” and “Quality Education” provide some focus for our family, they are still HUGE goals.  But doing something good can still help, even if it’s in a small way.

So we asked the question: What can we do at home or in our community that would help kids learn and keep our water clean?

There’s no wrong answers here.  Check out some things we came up with:

• Take showers in under 5 minutes.
• Build a clean water machine.
• Organize a trash-pickup at our park by a lake.
• Use a rain barrel to water the garden.
• Contribute donations for a well through World Vision or another organization.
• Eat bugs.  Seriously!  This protein saves tons of water (listen to Laura, co-founder of Chirps cricket chips)
• Bring school supplies to a local preschool for families that might need them.
• Read kids books.
• Make sandwiches for a local football team where kids struggle with homelessness and food security – I have a friend that’s been doing this for a few years and it’s something the whole family can do.
• Buy pencils.
• Sponsor a scholar at She’s the First (listen to co-founder Christen’s story here)

Looking for inspiration?  Here’s another list of ideas from the UN that can help get you started.

4. Choose ideas you want to take action on.

At this point, you’ve defined your family goals for the year and came up with some ideas.  Start with 3 – 5 things you’d like to commit to and put some dates on the calendar.

We’re planning on:

• Taking under 5 minute showers – starting now
• Trash pickup with the kids and their friends this spring – March 2018.
• Making sandwiches for football team – July 2018
• Donating to a clean water charity – January 2018

5. Create your Family Goals Action Plan!

Now we’re going to put all of the steps together.  Declare your family goal(s) and the actions you plan on taking this year.

Taking these steps won’t change the world, but they might change the world for one person. And working together as a team, your family can grow stronger while making a difference.

Are you ready to set your Family Goals?  Let’s do this!

Here’s a super easy way to start…

Get the freebie for this post for EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO PLAN YOUR GOALS:

Grab the step-by-step cheat sheet so you can work through this process with your own family.  With this worksheet, you’ll know exactly how to plan your Family Goals for 2018.