one way to teach kids to look outside of themselves

We had our annual Children for Children Concert this week.

It might have been my favorite.

“Children for Children” concerts are something my family did growing up. We’d chose a charity to support, invite all the kids of the neighborhood to perform, and invite their parents to donate to the charity we were raising money for as their “ticket” to the concert.

Fast forward all these years later and we (Eyres) have splintered off to do our own Children for Children concerts. We invited our cul-de-sac neighbors to join us to put on a concert years ago and it has stuck (mostly spearheaded by them because they have got their act together I tell you!) We have raised money for all kinds of different charities (you can search “children for children” in the search bar here on the blog to see many of them), and I think it’s such a great way to help kids get a better grasp of what’s going on in the world and how they can open their hearts to something so much bigger than themselves.

We are now down to four kids left in the cul-de-sac since everyone just keeps growing up but these four are mighty I tell you.

We had the best of intentions to hold the concert around Christmas like we usually do. So these kids got busy planning:

But Christmas was crazy this year, so we decided to put it off until this week.

This year we raised money for a non-profit called “Reach Ukraine” that is doing so much good over in Poland for the MILLIONS of refugees who have fled there.

This family from here decided to sell their house and go over and live in Poland to help.

Pretty incredible right?

Our neighbors went to help for a couple weeks last year and were amazed with what they have started (you can follow them here for some of the stories and some of the people they’ve been able to help).

Crazy enough the mom of this family happened to be back in the states for something as we were planning, so she came and met with the kids one night to let them know the updates.

The war over there has slipped out of the front page of the news, but oh, there’s still so much going on, and SO MANY people who need help!

Love that these kids got educated on the hard stuff as well as the beautiful stuff going on right there on the Poland/Ukraine border.

These girls texted invites and passed them out to neighbors as well:

Got the program all finalized with all those who were coming…

The kids practiced how they wanted to conduct, assigned refreshments, followed up, and then it was time for the big night.

I loved watching this room fill right up with all these people who were willing to perform and who’s hearts were open to donate to this good cause (including my brothers Jo and Josh).

There were some awesome piano numbers:

Harpists and poets:

An artist who sold her art to donate:

…and her sister who made freshly squeezed OJ and sold that to donate too.

We had some awesome dancers:

Some poetry reciting and one cute girl showed her book she had made and read us a little bit of it:

My two favorite parts:

1) Lucy closed it up, and I had been a tad bit worried about this. But that girl just stood up there with confidence and beauty, and graciously thanked everyone and wrapped it up with a few of her thoughts.

2) She announced the closing number: a song from some of the Ukrainian refugees singing back to us.

It really was a beautiful night filled up with so much love and generosity.

Lucy missed the funnest part for the kids: counting up the donations. (she has SO much homework she was worried about), but I always love this part when kids eyes get big in amazement with the money donations, so excited to give them away and Lucy was equally excited to hear all about it:

There is just so much joy in giving and learning to reach outside of yourself.

A pretty exciting thing is that my family foundation is willing to match any donations received, so that money they made (over $4,500 and still growing!) will be matched, and every single dollar goes directly to the kids in need (this organization has no overhead, they donate directly and are able to help so much!)

If any blog readers are interested in helping, please join us! You can venmo @reachhumanity. Be sure to add in your notes “children for children” concert so it can be matched.

Happy Thursday!