It doesn’t start with big events or hours of service at the soup kitchen or the local Habitat for Humanity. Service is an idea that kids need to understand from deep within their hearts. This understanding will spring forth service without you or their school requiring it or even forcing it on them.
With kids, start them off with the concept of service so that their minds start to think of how their actions and inaction affect the people around them. Tell them stories about how you showed concern for another and how it made you and that person feel. Something simple as seeing someone trip and how you lent them a hand. Today many people reach for their phones and try to capture the moment with their cameras so they can be an online sensation. Get them to change their mentality so they offer that person a hand. This type of approach to life will bring them much more happiness and longer lasting peace than all the “likes” they can imagine.
Ask them daily if they had an opportunity to serve someone else. Encourage them to look for moments and then come home and share them.
Good luck.