Many mothers and daughters spend hours together shopping for clothes. Joan Strauss and her daughter, 17-year-old Alexa, spend hours sorting them. It's a bonding experience -- and it's a giving one, too.
The mother-daughter duo's efforts help keep the children's clothing donation closet at Our House in Little Rock organized and ready for families in need.
"My fun role is that I get to make little outfits and hang them on racks," Alexa says. "That makes it easy for parents to come in and pick out a cute outfit for their child, depending on what they need, for free."
Our House staff guide them on what clothing sizes or styles are needed most each time they visit. They let the staff know if a particular clothing size or type is in short supply so those items can be added to the Our House wish list, which is shared on the organization's Facebook page and website -- ourhouseshelter.org/giveitems/.
Strauss and her husband, Noel, encouraged Alexa and their son, Ethan, now 19, to volunteer.
"As they started managing their time we wanted to make sure that they gave time on a consistent basis to an organization that they could contribute to. We wanted that to be a foundational part of their lives," Strauss says.
Ethan's volunteer effort started with Our House, and Alexa, who often tagged along, has found a connection there as well.
Our House opened in 1987 with a comprehensive plan to allow homeless families to stay together long-term while getting support to help them get back on their feet. The organization's leaders helped start a free health clinic for uninsured, low-income people, and created a career center, offering job skills training as well as a re-entry program for people who have been incarcerated and are trying to get back into the workforce. Free childcare is available for working parents, and there are after-school and summer learning programs for children. The Central Arkansas Family Stability Institute program, too, is onsite at Our House, working with families that are in danger of becoming homeless connect with the appropriate Our House services to improve their situations.
Strauss and her husband guided Ethan and Alexa toward incorporating their strengths and interests into their volunteer work.
"Ethan zeroed in on pingpong because he loved to play pingpong. He and his dad would have some very competitive games as he was growing up," says Strauss of her son, a student at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
Ethan, as a 10th grader, raised money to buy a pingpong table for the Our Club after-school program at Our House and began teaching children there to play the game.
"We just had a great time as a family doing that together," Strauss says. "As you can imagine, there were a lot of pingpong balls to pick up."
"That was my main job," says Alexa of those sessions with her big brother. "I had a lot of fun playing with the kids, because they are all sweet and funny."
When she was in third grade, Alexa's Girl Scout troop made a meal for the residents at Our House. Later her fifth-grade class bought garden supplies for a community garden at Our House.
"With Ethan's involvement, I wanted to stay in contact and have the same experience when I was in high school," she says.
Alexa, an avid reader, began reading sessions with the toddlers and preschoolers at Our House.
"When I was little my parents would read to me and I think that helped me learn to read more easily," she says. "Just 15 minutes of hearing words and seeing words being read can help you so much as a little kid."
In 2020, as schools went virtual to slow the spread of covid-19, she volunteered to tutor through Our House's after-school program.
"I had a hard time with online school, but I can't imagine how hard of a time a 9-year-old would have," she says. "I started tutoring a second grader in reading and math. It was online so I had the student perspective and also the teaching perspective."
The Our House staff helped her plan assignments and coordinated lessons with her student's teacher at school. She would drop off books, most often by Mo Willems, one of her favorite childhood authors -- for the little girl, and they would read them together via Zoom a few days later.
Strauss is appreciative of Davis Wadley, Our House's volunteer coordinator, and other Our House staff who support her children's volunteer efforts.
"They have been responsive to their emails, they have been open to their ideas ... they have really amazed me that they have taken time to help high school students get involved as much as my children have been able to," Strauss says.
Alexa hopes to resume tutoring again this year, and she has other ideas as well.
"I would like to start kind of a library system," she says. "I would like to be able to have people from school come in and read and donate books, maybe have a library cart and do some reading sessions with the kids."
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Family helps Our House residents - Arkansas Online
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