A charitable & foundational partnerships to ensure that portions of proceeds and/or profits are channeled to organizations dedicated to building better lives for underprivileged kids.
I’ve found living proof (again) that it’s cool to be kind…
Cape Kid Evan Druskin
Meet Evan Druskin. He’s our newest Cape Kid and a 16-year-old who clearly embodies Wear the Cape’s heroic values. A soon-to-be high school junior, Evan plays baseball at Gill St. Bernards School in Gladstone, NJ, AND he’s a kind kid who helps others.
What started out as a mitzvah project became so much more. For the past decade, this everyday hero has been collecting baseball and softball equipment for underprivileged youth via the PITCH IN FOR BASEBALL organization. Evan’s good deeds are instructive: he combined his passion for helping people with his love of the game of baseball. Evan shared,
“During a project for my religious studies, I visited the [PITCH IN FOR BASEBALL] warehouse operation, and I was so impressed with everything that I saw that I wanted to stay involved beyond my project.”
Evan gathers used sports equipment through a school-wide drive he runs at the Gill St. Bernards upper, middle, and lower schools, as well as through Zoned Baseball Academy, a baseball training facility in Bridgewater, NJ.
Over the years, Evan has been one of the highest producing providers to PITCH IN FOR BASEBALL, having gathered and donated over 500 pieces of equipment. This equipment, once collected, is shipped worldwide to applicants who are in need, from the corners of America to the reaches of Africa. Evan explained that, for children living in volatile nations—including many in the Middle East—playing a sport such as baseball or softball can serve as a form of escape and as a coping mechanism for dealing with difficult situations.
When I interviewed Evan this summer, I was amazed at how focused and productive he is at a young age. While many his age do not hold regular summer jobs, we had to coordinate the interview around his busy schedule of working at Teknicks, an agency in Bayhead, NJ where he’s learning the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A quick study, Evan said he did not know much about SEO when he started out this summer but now he feels very comfortable with this burgeoning field. I love how passionate this Cape Kid becomes about everything in his life.
When I went to interview Evan, I brought my two oldest children Tommy and Samantha to help give Evan a goody bag of Cape products. And a testament to the fact that everyone—young and old—has the power to make an impact and lead by example, my kids still bring up Evan’s name and gush about his good deeds.
Evan punctuated our interview by words that should be inspiration to us all,
“I am able to change people’s lives by putting my time and energy toward giving back. I am truly helping people because I volunteer.”
(To read the “Top 10 Reasons to Encourage Your Kids to Volunteer”, according to Wear the Cape’s resident character education expert Dr. Brown, click here.)
A Cape Kid in action and a great role model, indeed! Evan, we thank you for wearing the cape!
To learn more about the PITCH IN FOR BASEBALL organization or to make a donation of your own equipment, contact Evan: evandruskin1 at aol dot com.
If you know of a young person whose heroic character shines and should be a Cape Kid—whether 2 years old or 22 years old—please send me an email: leighann at wearthecapekids dot com. We’d love to highlight his or her efforts to create a better, kinder world!
Choose kind,
Leigh Ann
To make a donation to the kidkind foundation, a registered 501 (c)(3) charity, click here, or send a check payable to the kidkind foundation to:
kidkind foundation 16 Mt Bethel Road, Suite 191 Warren, NJ 07059
Top 10 Reasons to Encourage Your Kids to Volunteer
Wear the Cape’s resident expert on character education sheds light on the value of urging children to become involved in community service activities
Wear the Cape, a brand that gives back and aims to restore the power of kindness and good character with cool, inspirational products and its non-profit the kidkind foundation, today released the “Top 10 Reasons to Encourage Your Kids to Volunteer.” Authored by the organization’s resident expert on character education, Philip Brown, PhD, the Top 10 List shares with parents research-based reasons to urge their children to make time to serve others.
“Back-to-school season ushers in a renewed focus on everything from academics to athletics, but many parents are challenged to find positive ways for their kids to spend time when they’re not on campus,” commented Dr. Brown, who is a senior consultant at the National School Climate Center. “While over-programming your child’s schedule isn’t a healthy option—kids of all ages need free time to play—you should help with structuring some of his or her time to optimize maturation.”
Dr. Brown explained, “As young people get older, they need to stretch their abilities, including their moral sensibilities. Engagement with other kids and adults in meaningful service activities can support healthy development in a variety of ways, providing opportunities for both growth and positive fulfillment.”
TOP 10 REASONS TO ENCOURAGE YOUR KIDS TO VOLUNTEER
#1: Volunteering helps foster empathy.
Empathy is the most critical disposition for responding to the needs of others. We need to be able to imagine what other people may be going through or feeling. Volunteering helps engage our natural empathic sense, but you have to make sure that there are opportunities to talk about the purpose and experience of any volunteer activity if the recipients aren’t visible in the process (making sandwiches for the homeless isn’t the same as helping to deliver the sandwiches to homeless people).
#2: Volunteering helps develop a sense of self-efficacy.
Children may understand that other people need help or that there are projects that could make a community more habitable or productive, but feel helpless or unclear that an individual can do anything about it in response. Volunteering can provide experiences that affirm a young person’s sense that they can make a difference through their own effort and skills. These experiences can empower young people to apply themselves in other contexts, including school and other organized activities, such as faith-based youth groups or scouting.
#3: Volunteers gain experience working with other people.
Social skills are best learned in social situations. When people come together to engage in a meaningful task, issues of communication, power, collaboration and trust rise to the surface in a supportive context. It’s easier, although still a challenge, to learn to navigate these waters with others who may be more skillful and be in a position to offer supportive feedback. It’s a good way for parents and children to see each other in a different light, as well, and learn together.
#4: Volunteering develops new skills.
In addition to social skills, practical experiences of organizing tasks and using physical and mental capabilities to get jobs done is fundamental to successful work of any kind. In school, these skills are often fragmented or unrelated to real-world applications. Service activities offer the chance to apply and test our abilities, as well as learn from other kids or adults in a way that engages kids’ natural drive for competence.
# 5: Volunteering provides the opportunity to explore new interests and develop new passions.
There is nothing more exhilarating than discovering a new field of interest that sparks a real passion for learning and doing. One of the wonderful things about being our species is our inquisitiveness and motivation to investigate and find meaning in discovery. Service activities have the potential to expose us to these opportunities and see how other people live their passions.
#6: Volunteers learn a lot.
In the process of joining with others in service, volunteers learn about their community and the larger world. It takes us out of our own sphere of self-interest and self-absorption and opens us to issues and solutions, as well as other people’s needs.
#7: Volunteers actually make a difference in other people’s lives.
Think about how much more impoverished our communities would be if all of the volunteer services disappeared. This is a lesson that children can be taught early and take with them into adulthood. For example, volunteers are critical in:
Helping families (daycare and eldercare)
Improving schools (tutoring, literacy)
Supporting youth (mentoring and after-school programs)
Beautifying the community (beach and park cleanups)
#8:Volunteering encourages civic responsibility.
Community service and volunteerism are a way to teach the importance of investing in our community and the people who live in it. We want our kids to not only be successful in their work and personal lives, but to learn what it means to be a citizen in our republic. The American values of democratic decision-making, social justice and equal opportunity require active participation for us to have a successfully functioning country.
#9: Volunteering offers you a chance to give back.
It’s important for children to see that there are small and large opportunities to support community resources that your family uses or that benefit people they care about. Whether it’s offering to help man a booth to support improvements in a park you use, or joining a fundraising walk to support medical research for a disease that afflicts a family member or friend, children and adults alike can feel empowered through participation.
#10: Volunteering is good for you.
While this is the last reason for volunteering on this list, and may not be the most important, it is good to know that research has consistently shown that acting altruistically has real benefits. Volunteering provides physical and mental rewards; it has been shown to:
Reduce stress: When you focus on someone other than yourself, it interrupts tension-producing patterns.
Make you healthier: The moods and emotions that frequently come through volunteer service like optimism, joy, and a sense of self-efficacy can contribute to strengthening the immune system.
Make you happier: Human beings are social animals. Working closely with others in a common pursuit for the benefit of our fellow creatures can fill us with a sense of purpose, and that can lead us to feelings of satisfaction and true happiness.
“Volunteering with your kids touches hearts, teaches important life lessons and engraves fond, lifelong memories of family bonding,” said Leigh Ann Errico, CEO and founder of Wear the Cape and the kidkind foundation. “Understanding and participating in activities to benefit the community is crucial to weaving one’s moral fiber.”
Errico built Wear the Cape and established the foundation in 2013 after she came up short in her search for resources on kindness and character-building that would appeal to her own four children. Other parents clearly had faced the same challenge; Wear the Cape’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/wearthecape) already has over 1,100 “Likes”, all through organic growth. The idea for the brand was sparked when Errico observed that the chance to wear a cape—the organization’s logo—motivates children to act like heroes, or “Cape Kids,” in order to live up to the symbol of honor.
In partnership with Wear the Cape and the kidkind foundation, Dr. Brown has embarked on a critical mission to help parents across the country support the development of character in their kids.
The Omaha World-Herald’s Momaha, “where Omaha moms connect,” published a wonderful write-up on the Top 10 list that Wear the Cape issued today about the importance of encouraging your kids to volunteer. Reporter Josie Loza opens the article, “10 reasons to encourage your child to volunteer,” with some brief background on Wear the Cape and the kidkind foundation. From the piece:
Wear the Cape is a brand with a mission to empower kids to be heroes.
In fact, its KidKind Foundation was built on the hope that it could teach children to have empathy, to be kind and to restore good character.
All great traits you’d find in a superhero, right?
Josie then goes on to share:
It’s a cool initiative that released a Top 10 list why parents should encourage their kids to volunteer. All research-based reasons that Dr. Phillip Brown, a senior consultant at the National School Climate Center, studied in character education.
To read Josie’s story in full, head on over to the Omaha World-Herald’s website. And to read Wear the Cape Founder Leigh Ann Errico’s reflections on the value in volunteering as a family, as well as Dr. Brown’s insight about the positives of engaging in meaningful service activities, find the press release here.
