Easter Celebrations at the Orphanages!

Festivals are such a good time to share love and gifts! I love to go and meet kids and the elderly on every festival that I can to spread love an happiness in any small way possible.
The smile I see on the faces of the people makes the festival even more joyous!

This time for Easter, I have decided to make baskets and take them to an orphanage here in MI. I haven't ever done this before so I am definitely looking for ideas online and asking people to help me too. I have bought a few baskets already and some gifts  to give away to the kids with a few of my friends so we can talk about Easter, it's significance and maybe even hide a few eggs for them to find.

I am trying to find as many ideas as I can to stuff the baskets with chocolates and gifts. I want to make sure I make this Easter a memorable one for the kids at the orphanage and they don't feel less loved. I am hoping to get together with three other friends and go there the Sunday and spend the entire day with them, playing and listening to them, maybe reading to them so they feel happy about the festival and have a good time.
Any suggestions to make it better would be greatly appreciated! :) Happy Easter in advance!

Celebrations & Volunteering - A trip down memory lane!

So since I belong to India which is a land of festivals and celebrations, I have grown up admiring the coming together of people of all ages and religions to celebrate each and every festival. It didn't matter if it was a Hindu, Muslim, Christian or a Sikh festival, we all got together to celebrate! And the celebrations didn't just involve eating, bursting crackers, wearing new clothes, decorating the houses during holiday time, it meant a lot more! It meant reaching out to the less privileged and make them feel less unfortunate, make them feel loved and a part of the celebrations of the entire country.

We went out to orphanages, old people homes and even temples, where people who didn't have family or enough money to enjoy festivals the way they would have wanted to and distributed sweets, clothes and fire crackers. The smiles we brought to each face made our festivals lighten up even more and the feeling of having so many people blessing you was amazing.

The next day, since everyone's had so much fun bursting crackers, eating and drinking at parks and other places, there used to be litter all around so we gathered kids and other volunteers and picked up the dirt from our parks! Everyone felt good about it and it helped keep the place clean at the same time. I feel a lot of what I am today, is thanks to the volunteering and meeting people of all walks of life. I believe I started to appreciate what I had and how privileged my life was, after I started volunteering and helping people who didn't have a lifestyle like mine. It was a great feeling! A feeling of happiness, satisfaction and that of doing something for the community.

Every festival we celebrated, we'd donate an amount my friends and I had collected to organizations, like HelpAge India or CRY and our parents would match up the amount. HelpAge India even gave us trophies for the amounts we collected and that made us even more proud and kept us motivated to do more.
I think a major part of my childhood's memories are these celebrations that involved volunteering and meeting kids and elderly and spending time with them, giving them a chance to have a great celebration.