After giving birth to her fourth child shortly before the pandemic started in 2020 and being quarantined due to COVID-19 mandates, Jessica Jackley thought about creating an impactful project for her family that could be delivered right to your doorsteps. The result of her initial thoughts turned into Alltruists, an at-home, kid-friendly volunteer project in partnership with multiple nonprofits.
Alltruists currently provides families with the tools and resources needed to tackle issues while being hands-on through empathy-building activities. Some of the topics Jackley’s company has tackled include shelter pets, homelessness, clean water, hunger, and refugees in Ukraine. Each box is created with a targeted age group in mind and includes guides for conversations and creative projects. Some of the projects allow children to explore their own backyards or even strive to live a more sustainable life at home by tweaking some of their everyday tasks, like reducing their water usage.
Jackley asserts that volunteering is possible even with little ones, and ultimately helps to nurture and raise happy, kind, and confident children. The mom of four also believes families don’t have to "glaze over" hard topics or “shield” their children from worldly topics.
During a conversation with Mom.com, Jackley said she was inspired to create a volunteer project that didn’t leave children feeling awful about the world they live in.
“Because it’s tricky to say, ‘Hey, guess what? There’s this issue in the world and there are fun facts and not-so-fun facts,” Jackley told Mom.com. “There’s tricky stuff to talk about, but I wanted to provide a guide of educational materials and activities.”
After Russia attacked Ukraine, Jackley decided to take action here in the states and create one of the company’s most popular boxes about refugees. The box focuses on displaced people, encouraging kids to put together a care package for a refugee child before mailing it off. The box, Jackley says, included valuable items and a friendship bracelet and note.
Another box centered on clean water encourages kids to put reminders around the sources of water inside of their homes to raise awareness of water usage.
“So maybe it’s take five-minute showers or let’s turn off the tap when we’re brushing our teeth or lathering up, or let’s only run the washer when it’s full,” Jackley said, adding that “we’ve tried to identify this sort of sweet spot among what’s an issue that’s important for kids to know about and how can we make it easy to talk to them about.”
While the box was made with children in mind, it has also proven to be educational and engaging for parents, too.
“So weirdly, a lot of adults who participate end up having a lovely experience, too,” Jackley said.
For parents interested in learning more about Alltruists or purchasing a box, you can visit the website here.
