Grandparent-Grandchild Volunteering

Doing Good Together is featured in the  book, Your Retirement Quest: 10 Secrets for Creating and Living a Fulfilling Retirement, encouraging grandparents to volunteer with their grandchildren. This engaging book is filled with lots of other practical, useful tips for how to intentionally plan for a meaningful retirement. Buy your very own copy (or a copy for your favorite retiree) on amazon.com today! Are you a grandparent that's done a volunteer project with your grandchildren? Do you know any grandparents who have made multi-generational service a part of their retirement plan? If so, we'd love hear about it!

3 Ways To Do Good During Dinner

Even the busiest family has to eat now and then. Dining together is not only a wonderful way to connect amid the torrid pace of modern life, it is a great opportunity to put some of your family's green-living goals into action.

Here are three exceedingly simple steps that you could start this week.

1. Buy Better Beef: Check out this New York Times article about grass-fed beef. Long story short, grass fed beef is nutritious, humane, and environmentally-friendly. My family has been committed to buying grass-fed, locally-raised beef for a few years. It's a simple way to feel good about your dinner choices. If you live in the Twin Cities, consider the Grass Fed Cattle Company. They make buying better beef easy. If you aren't in the area, check out Eat Wild to find a vendor near you. Once you've found a place that works for you, making a responsible meat selection becomes automatic. It's one less thing to think about.
2. Help your kids take notice: Reflecting on the food chain can be tough with kids. At 4, Little Miss still differentiates between our "real chickens" (the five that live in our backyard coop) and the "other chicken that we eat." Big Sis, though, struggled with our Thanksgiving conversation about the free-range turkey we picked up at the farmer's market. Here is a great video from Brain Pop about the food chain that helps put it all into perspective. At almost seven, she frequently declares herself a vegetarian only to demand hamburgers the next day. Knowing that her beef comes from local, humanely raised cattle seems to make her feel somewhat better about her burger cravings.
3. Vegetarian Variety: Because buying better meat products is, in fact, substantially more expensive than basic grocery store prices, we commit a few days each week to a vegetarian menu. Folding more brown rice and beans into our diet not only offsets the cost of grass-fed beef, it increases our dining variety. If you are looking for kid-friendly vegetarian recipes, here are three weekday staples that I love and my kids actually enjoy eating (I usually make both soup recipes in the crock pot, so they're perfect for a busy schedule).

• Giada's Lentil Soup
• Black Bean and Rice Enchiladas
• Pasta and Chickpeas Stew (I omit the chicken in this recipe and add an extra can of chick peas)

Volunteer with DGT!

If you live in the Twin Cities and are excited about helping families raise compassionate, civically engaged kids through family volunteering, consider getting involved with Doing Good Together. We are looking for folks to serve on our development or event committees – and to help out in other ways, too. We’d be happy to work with you to see how your interests and talents might help in furthering our mission. Contact Jenny at jenny@doinggoodtogether.org or 612.822.6502.

The Power of Half

Read the story of the Salwens, an Atlanta family that decided to take the dramatic step of selling their house and donating half the value ($800,000) to The Hunger Project in Ghana. Although most of us are not in a position to do something that life-altering, this family's journey to giving back, chronicled in their book, The Power of Half, challenges us to think about what we can do without in order to make a difference for someone else. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Help Earthquake Victims

Imagining the horror and devastation of the earthquake in Chile so soon after the disaster in Haiti is overwhelming. However, if your children are old enough, have a conversation about what your family can do to help -- perhaps host a fundraiser or give up something that matters to you for a month (going out to eat?) and donate the money to a relief group. The Hufffington Post has gathered a list of organizations that need your support. To support Chilian earthquake victims, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/27/chile-earthquake-relief-h_n_479426.html If you'd like to donate to Haitian relief, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/haiti-earthquake-relief-h_n_421014.html

Rewarding Altruism

Check out the thought provoking piece in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune  by columnist Gail Rosenblum about the Give a Day, Get a Disney Day promotion. What do you think? Do programs like these expand our volunteer pool and introduce new folks to the value of community involvement? Or do they send the message to our children that you do good deeds for a reward? We'd love to hear your thoughts.