Service Project: Back Seat Bags

A Church article with View Comments posted 18 August 2009.
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You’re driving along, and you stop at a stop sign or traffic signal near a major highway. You see a man, dressed shabbily, standing by the side of the road with a cardboard sign. Maybe it says he’s a veteran, maybe he needs food, transportation, or a job. What do you do?

Homeless person wants a beerMost Christians do what most everyone else does in that situation – they avert their eyes. They don’t make eye contact. They roll up their car windows. Especially if their precious children are in the car. Guess what?

Your kids are watching how you treat the poor.

Here’s a simple service project you can do with kids of school age. Assemble “Back Seat Bags” that you keep in the back seat of the car. Get a paper bag, and include some essentials in it, depending what’s appropriate for your particular context:

  • Food: high energy, individually wrapped, storable foods like granola bars or beef jerky
  • Food: gift certificates to someplace ubiquitous, like McDonalds
  • Information: a map or directions to nearest homeless shelters & food pantries
  • Information: a small, lightweight tract written in English and/or Spanish
  • Transportation: bus tokens
  • What else could we put in back seat bags? Leave suggestions in the comments, below.

The key is to pick things that can sit in a hot car for a long time, don’t expire, and have little cash value on exchange. Bus tokens, gift certificates, and the like may be sold on the grey market, so consider that when making a list of items for your bags. Never include cash.

When you are in the car, stopped on a road near where someone is begging, instead of turning our eyes away and not doing anything, we now have something responsible we can give them. It’s a way to serve people and live out our faith.