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I wanted to post this a couple of months ago but we just barely finished it up! I was sick or my kids were sick all through December so Personal Progress got put on hold until this month. I thought I’d share this idea because it worked great with our awesome ladies and was something fun and different.
For November, I created this giving tree. I just bought a foam board at the Dollar store and drew a tree shape with a sharpie. I hot glued some fake leaves, just so it didn’t look too bare at first, and took it to church with me. The idea of it was that through that month, since it was Thanksgiving, the girls would get to add their names to a leaf for every act of service they performed or for doing Personal Progress. At the end of the month, I’d tally it up and distribute prizes according to how many leaves they each had.
To encourage them all to at least do one thing, I told them the reward for doing one would be to take part in a music video to a song they choose that we are going to play at our New Beginnings Program at the end of this month.
When I first announced my idea, I swear I heard crickets. So I thought maybe they didn’t like it and it was a dumb idea. But the next week, a couple of them asked if we were still going to be doing it and they seemed excited. I kept the idea and reminded them each week. It also helped that I met with several of them at the end of the month to go over their progress. Turns out, many of them had finished Value Projects and other experiences without even knowing it! It got them excited and I think they’ve started to realize it’s not hard or challenging; much of what is in Personal Progress they are already doing. It’s just a matter of incorporating the spiritual aspect of things into what they are doing.
Anyway, I finally had all of the prizes ready to distribute yesterday. We had 18 of girls participate, which is the majority of those who come consistently! I am so proud of them. This is how I distributed prizes and the little sayings that I put with them. Because my printer ran out of ink, and due to the massive snow storm we had through the weekend, I wasn’t able to print in color and didn’t do any fancy labels. I just typed the saying and printed them on 2″x4″ labels and dressed things up with ribbon, twine, and a little wrapping paper.
For 1-2 experiences or service acts completed: Kool-Aid Packet
