Simple Service Project and Chipotle Turkey Taco Salad

Serving in my own community is something I learned to value when I was young so it is important to me as a mother to find ways to involve my kids in service projects and community building activities. I want to foster a ‘habit of giving’ while they are young.

Though we try to find ways to lend a helping hand all year long, we made it a goal a few years ago to complete a family service project each summer. This summer we partnered with Champions for Kids to serve our local food pantry in a Simple Service Project.

The idea behind Champions for Kids is that helping others can be simple. With that in mind, we hosted a small and simple Taco Party, a Fiesta to Feed Families.

Tacos are my favorite thing to serve in the summer and the easiest way I know to satisfy a crowd. They are simple to make and can easily be adapted not only to the seasonal produce available, but also to individual food preferences, which makes them the ideal food for any gathering involving kids. Set up a taco bar and everyone can build their own taco just how they like it!

To make our fiesta a little more fun than an ordinary dinner, we turned our tacos into taco bowls and filled them with Chipotle Turkey Taco Salad. Filled with lean ground Jenni-O Turkey, a fresh from the garden pico de gallo, and topped with a Chipotle Sour Cream dressing, these taco bowls were a hit!

When we invited our friends and family to our Taco Fiesta, we asked everyone to bring a few non-perishable food items. While kids and adults were enjoying their tasty taco bowls, my girls and I explained how millions of kids lose access to school breakfasts/lunches every summer.

The three large boxes of food we collected from our dinner guests will help ensure that families in our community will have access to nutritious meals this summer.

We took our food donations to our local food pantry, St. Felix Pantry. The kids were excited to be involved and know that their actions would serve to help people in need. We had a really good family discussion about how everyone needs help sometimes and how good it feels to be able to offer our own time and services to help other people.

St. Felix Pantry was a busy place on a Saturday. It was eye opening to my kids to see how many people were there to receive help and also how many people were there to give help. We were even able to find out about more opportunities to serve as a family at the pantry and the kids are excited to go back.

St. Felix Pantry also did me a service while we were there. On a white board in the back room someone had written a few lines of encouragement that actually brought tears to my eyes. Things haven’t been easy lately behind the scenes here at Some the Wiser, but it felt like a cosmic hug when I read these words:

God never gives up on making something beautiful out of our lives.

It was an encouraging reminder to keep moving forward, to keep looking for all the goodness and kindness and beauty in the world, and to keep finding ways to give back.

We gave a little something to St. Felix Pantry and then all of us left with a certain assurance that we had received a little something too. I think that is almost always how it works – when we reach out with compassion, we find our own hearts have been filled in the process.

Find out how to create your own Simple Service Project in 4 easy steps at Champions for kids.

And if you’re a local New Mexico reader, find out more ways to get involved at St. Felix Pantry, including simple things like linking your grocery store rewards cards to the food bank. Check it out here.