CommUNITY Service Challenge Categories

Challenge Guidelines:

1. Challenge participants must complete a service activity from at least four of the eight categories.
2. Challenge participants must submit their completed service log along with photos of the child serving to the Office of the First Lady by Monday, August 19.

We have listed examples of service activities under each category; however, you do not have to use these examples. We challenge you to get creative and come up with your own service project ideas!

Category 1: Care for the food-insecure

Examples:

• Pack snack bags for children who receive assistance at food banks. Ask your local food bank what to include in the bags!
• Make place mats for a local Meals on Wheels program to deliver with the meals they provide.
• Place a box on your porch. Let your neighbors know that you are collecting goods for a local food pantry.

Category 2: Share your appreciation

Examples:

• Plan a parade of friends to welcome healthcare workers as they arrive for duty.
• Make treats and leave them at your front door or mailbox for postal workers and delivery drivers.
• Make thank you cards for grocers. Whenever you go to the grocery store, pass them out to the workers you see there.

Category 3: Show kindness to the elderly

Examples:

• Make flower arrangements to decorate the dining room of a local senior citizen center.
• Ask the director of a local nursing home to pair you with a resident who would enjoy a pen pal. Write letters to your pen pal and foster a friendship with them.
• Find an elderly person that needs help with outdoor chores: offer to mow their grass, water their flowers, wash their car…

Category 4: Support foster kids and families

Examples:

• Drop off snacks at the local DCS office where foster children wait for placement.
• Donate new or gently used clothing and/or toys to a local foster care non-profit.
• If you know a family who is fostering, make a fun kit to celebrate a foster child’s birthday and drop it off to them.

Category 5: Thank first responders

Examples:

• Create care packages for firefighters or police officers in your neighborhood. You might include granola bars, gum, a thank you note, water etc.
• Decorate a first responder’s mailbox or sidewalk to say thank you.
• Host a cookie drive. Have your friends each bring a batch of cookies. Enjoy delivering cookies to your local firefighters and police officers together – and be sure to tell them thank you!

Category 6: Honor veterans and servicemen and women

Examples:

• Write thank you notes or letters of encouragement to members of the military.
• Clean up trash and debris at your local veterans cemetery.
• Make a meal and deliver it to a Gold Star family who has lost a loved one in the line of duty.

Category 7: Uplift the homeless

Examples:

• Keep cold waters and snacks in the car to give to unhoused individuals as you encounter them around your community.
• Have a coat drive in your neighborhood and donate your collection to a homeless shelter.
• Collect toiletries and donate them to an organization that serves the homeless population.

Category 8: Free Choice

Use your creativity to serve a cause you are passionate about. Talk as a family about what individuals or causes you would like to help. You can repeat one of the activities listed above or use your creativity to meet a need for a person or cause you care about. Share with us what you did so that we can add it to our list of ideas!