Tzedakah letters

A small portion of our kids' allowance is set aside for tzedakah (charity). They usually just let it pile up for a while, and then every so often they decide to make a donation. I guess we let it pile up for a long time because it's only a dollar a week and they had gotten up to $70 each!

I asked each of them what social and political issues they are especially concerned about lately. Aaron is particularly worried about the environment, and Jordan is concerned about constitutional protections. I picked a few excellent charities suited to their interests and let them choose who to support (based on their own exploration of each organization's website). Aaron chose EarthJustice and Jordan selected the ACLU. Both kids were very impressed with these great organizations fighting for things that they care about.

I think when a kid makes a donation they should write a letter, so to help them out, I gave them a template to fill in. They found this helpful, and generated their own letters without complaint.

Then they had to locate the mailing address of their organization, and watch me write a check, and actually address and stamp an envelope, which is a life skill that kids don't always learn these days. 

Not too long afterwards, Jordan got a fabulous response from the Washington chapter of the ACLU. The executive director wrote him a personal letter thanking him for his donation, and enclosed a bunch of great ACLU swag, including awesome stickers, ACLU magnetic poetry, and a pocket constitution! 

Smart people over there -- Jordan was so impressed, he's probably an ACLU member for life now. (I hope EarthJustice is as forward-thinking with Aaron.) 

The first thing Jordan wanted to do was write to his US Studies teacher and tell her all about it. He enclosed photos of everything.

Hi Heidi-Marie, this is Jordan. a little while ago, I had the choice of what to spend my tzedaka money on. (tzedakah is donation money, it's part of my allowance) So I decided to donate to something defending the constitution. my mom did some research and found a couple of companies she thought l might like do donate through. first we looked at the ACLU, and I didn't need to look at any more. I had made my choice. so we donated. I sent them a letter with my name, age, and and why i donated. Later they sent me a letter back! it comes with some really great stuff [photos]. I was wondering if you could find some place in your class for u​​​​​​​​s all to do this.
sincerely,
Jordan
PS: your the best at discussing politics, no one better. i swear
PPS: i'll bring these to class on monday

His teacher wrote back the next day:

Hi Jordan,
This email made my YEAR. What an awesome step of personal advocacy that resulted in such a positive response! I hope you feel very proud of your efforts. I would love to do a project like this our class. I will adjust the curriculum to make some room for it. For extra credit, would you be willing to introduce your process to the class as a demonstration? I think we could do this next week (March 13-17).
Let's discuss further together this week!
Impressed and gratified,
Heidi-Marie

Is this a fantastic experience or what? I am so delighted with the whole thing!