The Power of Empathy :

A work colleague and friend invited us to help serve a dinner at Tent City on Mercer Island, Washington, near where we live. A number of tents are set up for the homeless community in that area. Various volunteers supply and serve dinner to the residents on a regular basis.
I took my two boys with me who were nine and five at the time. They had a lot of questions because this whole arrangement challenged a number of their common assumptions about how people lived in the world.
"Why don't they have homes?"
"Why don't they get food the way we do?"
We talked through reasons people end up in this type of desperate situation and the importance of a safety net for them. I explained that often the only safety net is others who are more fortunate being willing to share some of their time and resources.