projects
Identify possible community projects activities
General Ideas:
- Donate or raise money for your local Red Cross
- Organize a community blood drive
- Send cards to soldiers serving overseas
- For your next birthday, ask for charitable donations instead of gifts
- Hold a bake sale for your favorite charity
- Read books or letters to a person who is visually impaired
- Organize a wheelchair basketball team
- Participate in a charity race
- Organize an event or parade for Memorial Day
- Volunteer to help at a charity auction
- Participate in National Youth Service Day in April
- Contact a tree farm about donating Christmas trees to nursing homes, hospitals, or to families who can’t afford to buy their own
- Collect unused makeup and perfume to donate to a center for abused women
- Help register people to vote
- Organize a car wash and donate the profits to charity
- Help deliver meals and gifts to patients at a local hospital
Helping Children and Schools:
- Tutor children during or after school
- Donate stuffed animals to children in hospitals
- Organize games and activities for children in hospitals or who are visiting hospitalized relatives
- Knit or crochet baby blankets to be donated to hospitals or homeless shelters
- Collect baby clothes and supplies to donate to new parents
- Organize a Special Olympics event for children and teenagers
- Sponsor a bike-a-thon and give away bike safety gear, like helmets and knee pads, as prizes
- Collect used sports equipment to donate to families and after-school programs
- Volunteer at a summer camp for children who have lost a parent
- Sponsor a child living in a foreign country, either on your own or as part of a group
- Coach a youth sports team
- Put on performances for children in hospitals
- Give free music lessons to schoolchildren
- Become a volunteer teen crisis counselor
- Organize a summer reading program to encourage kids to read
- Organize an Easter egg hunt for neighborhood children
- Create a new game for children to play
- Organize events to help new students make friends
- Babysit children during a PTA meeting
- Organize a reading hour for children at a local school or library
- Donate used children’s books to a school library
- Work with the local health department to set up an immunization day or clinic to immunize children against childhood diseases
- Volunteer to help with Vacation Bible School or other religious camps
Helping Senior Citizens:
- Read to residents at a nursing home
- Deliver groceries and meals to elderly neighbors
- Teach computer skills to the elderly
- Drive seniors to doctor appointments
- Mow an elderly neighbor’s lawn
- Host a bingo night for nursing home residents
- Host a holiday meal for senior citizens
- Make birthday cards for the elderly
- Donate and decorate a Christmas tree at a nursing home
- Organize a family day for residents of a retirement home and relatives to play games together
- Ask residents of a retirement home to tell you about their lives
- Pick up medicine for an elderly neighbor
- Perform a concert or play at a senior center
- Help elderly neighbors clean their homes and organize their belongings
- Rake leaves, shovel snow, or wash windows for a senior citizen
- Deliver cookies to a homebound senior citizen
Helping Animals and the Environment:
- Take care of cats and dogs at an animal shelter
- Clean up a local park
- Raise money to provide a bulletproof vest for a police dog
- Plant a tree for Arbor Day
- Place a bird feeder and bird fountain in your backyard
- Start a butterfly garden in your community
- Sponsor a recycling contest
- Grow flowers in your backyard then give bouquets to hospital patients or people who are housebound
- Help create a new walking trail at a nature center or park
- Update the signs along a nature trail
- Adopt an acre of rainforest
- Help train service dogs
- Participate in the cleanup of a local river, pond, or lake
- Foster animals that shelters don’t have space for
- Organize a spay and neuter your pet program
- Care for a neighbor’s pet while they are away
- Sponsor an animal at your local zoo
- Train your pet to be a therapy animal and bring it to hospitals or nursing homes
- Build and set up a bird house
- Organize a carpool to reduce car emissions
- Campaign for more bike lanes in your town
- Volunteer at a nature camp and teach kids about the environment
- Test the water quality of a lake or river near you
- Plant native flowers or plants along highways
Helping the Hungry and/or Homeless:
- Build a house with Habitat for Humanity
- Donate your old clothes
- Volunteer at a soup kitchen
- Donate old eyeglasses to an organization that collects that and distributes them to people in need
- Donate non-perishable food to a food bank
- Donate blankets to a homeless shelter
- Host a Thanksgiving dinner for people who may not be able to afford their own
- Offer to babysit or nanny for a family in need
- Make “care kits” with shampoo, toothbrushes, combs, etc. to donate to homeless shelters
- Prepare a home-cooked meal for the residents of a nearby homeless shelter
- Collect grocery coupons to give to a local food bank
- Help repair or paint a local homeless shelter
- Donate art supplies to kids in a homeless shelter
- Help organize and sort donations at a homeless shelter
- Babysit children while their parents look for jobs
- Become a Big Buddy for children at a homeless shelter
- Take homeless children on outings
- Bake a batch of cookies or loaf of bread and deliver it to a soup kitchen
- Build flower boxes for Habitat for Humanity houses
- Organize a winter clothes drive to collect coats, hats, scarves, and gloves to be donated
- Make first aid kits for homeless shelters
Reducing Crime and Promoting Safety:
- Volunteer at a police station or firehouse
- Become a certified lifeguard and volunteer at a local pool or beach
- Paint over graffiti in your neighborhood
- Organize a self-defense workshop
- Organize a drug-free campaign
- Sponsor a drug-free post-prom event
- Start or join a neighborhood watch program
- Create and distribute a list of hotlines for people who might need help
- Teach a home-alone safety class for children
- Create a TV or radio public service announcement against drug and alcohol use
- Become CPR certified
- Volunteer as a crossing guard for an elementary school
Promoting Community Enhancement:
- Paint park benches
- Donate used books to your local library
- Become a tour guide at your local museum
- Repaint community fences
- Plant flowers in bare public areas
- Organize a campaign to raise money to buy and install new playground equipment for a park
- Participate in or help organize a community parade
- Clean up vacant lot
- Produce a neighborhood newspaper
- Campaign for more lighting along poorly lit streets
- Create a newcomers group in your neighborhood to help welcome new families
- Petition your town leaders to build more drinking fountains and public restrooms
- Volunteer to clean up trash at a community event
- Adopt a local highway or road and clean up trash along it
- Help fix or raise funds to repair a run-down playground
- Clean up after a natural disaster