The church’s Humanitarian Services does a great deal of good, and is a nice starting point for finding opportunities for service projects. They maintain a Current Needs page that is updated once every few months as needs change.

Currently among their listed needs is File Folder Games (guideline pdf here). Coloring, cutting out, and assembling games like this is right at the girl’s skill level, and is something that they can kind of relate to. There are lots of free patterns for file folder games all over the internet. I found this site (not the easiest to navigate, but it has a wide selection) and printed out some black and white pages.

At the activity the girls colored the pages, and started cutting them out. They had a great time sitting around gabbing, and stayed interested in coloring the for the whole hour we were at it. There was quite a bit of finishing and assembling for me to do later, but I kind of enjoy that sort of work. If I didn’t then I probably would have made it a 2-part activity and had the girls finish assembling the games themselves.

As they colored I took the opportunity to teach them a bit about poverty, and asked them to imagine how it might feel to not have a house, or a bed or other sorts of comforts we might take for granted. Many of the girls have preschool aged siblings and quickly understood the importance of providing toys and entertainment for displaced families.

Not all of the games we put together went to the LDS humanitarian aid- one girl gave hers to her little brother (who doesn’t live at her house). We gave some to the nursery in our ward. I had plans to get some to a local women & children’s shelter- but finding a way to bring the girls along to deliver them has proved problematic.