Donating school supplies for charity #cbias

For Back-To-School, as part of a sponsored social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their Client, I put together a donation of school supplies for charity.

What does back-to-school mean to you and your family? For our family it means a little road trip to pick up school supplies and a few new outfits, but it doesn’t stop there. This will be the 2nd time our family has also decided to purchase some school supplies for charity. The local charity we chose to donate to was Anna’s House – a family resource centre in southeastern Manitoba.

Anna’s House is a  family resource centre that provides a safe place where all families can be helped.  Anna’s House is named after Dr. Anna Schilstra, who was the communities first female doctor in the early 1900’s.  Dr. Anna Schilstra specialized in women’s health, pregnancy and childbirth. She was a prominent member and involved in the community and known for her caring and nurturing spirit. Anna’s House strives to carry on the tradition of the community connection and caring, by making unique resources available and welcoming all families in the Southeast region of Manitoba to Anna’s House.

As parents we believe it is important to be good examples when it comes to helping others. It’s easy to tell our children how they should act or behave, but modeling it is the way we believe they really learn.

Our 7 year old daughter Kate is a natural philanthropist. She is always thinking of others and doing what she can to help anyone in need. Putting together a donation of school supplies for a local charity was right up her alley.

Our youngest daughter Jane just turned 5 – she is learning a lot from her big sister. I don’t think we would have planned a more fun family evening.

Shopping for school supplies to donate not only teaches our daughters about social good, it also teaches them how to make wise purchasing decisions. We had a budget (Kate would have wanted to purchase everything on the back-to-school shelves) and we wanted to buy a backpack, a lunch kit and basic school supplies. I could just see Kate adding numbers in her head and looking for all the “must-haves” on her list.

In today’s society it is so easy to get caught up in having the best of everything for ourselves, let’s take the time to model for our children the importance of helping others. Donating school supplies is only one of the many ways families can help those in need, here are a few other ideas…

• volunteer at a soup kitchen
• donate used toys and clothes
• donate extra produce from your garden to local food banks

You can see our whole shopping experience by taking a look at our Google+ album.

So tell me, what does Back-To-School mean for your family?