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An Arts and Crafts Project to Help Homeless Families

Houses for Change is an award-winning educational crafts project for kids to raise awareness of homelessness and raise funds to help homeless families. It is a national campaign that answers the question, "What can I do to help?"

	Please view the video to see how one organization successfully participated in Houses for Change. Using magic markers, crayons, collage material, stickers and your imagination, decorate a plain box to look like a house. Take the box home and in the following weeks or months fill the box with loose change. At a selected date, for example Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter or the end of the school year, families bring their filled boxes back to the participating organization for a communal donation to Family Promise, or a local homeless organization or both. Houses for Change has universal appeal. It has been adopted by schools, congregations, homeless organizations, the United Way, and the YMCA to engage their youth in a meaningful service project. The decorated boxes can be used at community service days and birthday parties as piggy banks; at churches as Advent, Lenten and collection boxes; and at synagogues as tzedakah boxes.