Family Fun with Care Ethics

This student wanted to include her children in her social engagement project and chose to work on a project that both she and her children found meaningful and rewarding. Thus, she worked with four different organizations that focused on helping young families with children. She explained that her project relates to Care Ethics, because she viewed it to be an ethical theory that looks at “each person as an individual and their needs, values, and interests are all important…I tried to pick my civic engagements so my children could relate, in a caring way.”

The student asserted that, “In all the acts of charity we participated in, Care Ethics is the one ethical theory that relates to it all. The values it brought out were – generosity, helpfulness, sensitivity, acceptance and compassion. We were able to identify with each of the organizations we helped.”

The four organizations she worked with included Blessings in a Backpack, The CAP Agency, Feed My Starving Children (FMSC), and Second Harvest Heartland. She chose to complete the social engagement project with her children in order to show them, “that small acts of charity make a difference in the world and also the importance of taking the gifts you are given in life and giving back to others with those gifts.” Her project aimed to show, “that both volunteering and active parenting can be done even during the busiest of times…We will be trying to make the world a better place and to set an example for other families to do the same.”

When reflecting upon her experience with socially engaged philosophy, she said that incorporating social engagement into her family’s everyday life made a difference that “was not only made in other peoples’ lives but also in our own.” This student and her family continued to volunteer at the food shelf even after her ethics class was over and planned to celebrate her daughter’s birthday at Feed My Starving Children.