Amazing race service project

We just pulled off a super fun amazing race service project that I HAD to share it with you! We did this for a church activity –but I’m sure you can adapt it if you are doing it for a school project!

(I belong to this church-and I’m over the young woman (ages 11-18 ish) So we divided up the groups evenly and assigned each group to an adult leader to drive us from place to place.

We had five groups–and I made it so each group started at a different place. 5 stations. 3 were the same for each group and 2 were service projects for different people in the ward (I had put it out on our neighborhood facebook page so we could have people sign up beforehand. We had tried a service project a few years earlier and we couldn’t get anyone to let us in or help out at all on a whim! So I thought a little prep work beforehand would pay off.

Here are the 5 stations.

station number 1: cupcakes.

I had made dozens of cupcakes and had frosting and sprinkles at the church- they had to figure out the picture (it from our church kitchen) and decorate a certain amount of cupcakes and deliver it to the name on the back. We picked the new people in our neighborhood to deliver cookies too!

Station 2: Cleaning.

We had families sign up to let us in and clean. blinds, baseboards, spiderwebs, wipe down doors, fold laundry etc. Luckily–they had some fun names we could drop hints about. the LOVES, a lady named DORA, the PEERS, The CLYDES and the POOLES. They had to figure out the name and head to the house to do the service project (I did give each leader a cheat sheet of where they were going so they could help out if needed!)

3rd Station: Car cleaning

(I included this prinatble down below) but basically it tells the girls that their leaders love them and do so much for them–so they pulled into my driveaway were I had a vacuum, windex, armor all wipes etc all there for them to clean out their leader’s cars! (the leader’s cheat sheet just had my address on it–not the chore!)

4th station: More neighborhood service.

This was mostly weed pulling but one group did clean out a gutter

For this clue I went to the dollar store and grabbed some easy puzzles and wrote the people’s name on the back

This is my team assembling the puzzle in the back of the car!

and last station: pick up trash.

longitude and latitude coordinates. I walked to a spot and marked it on my google maps. Then wrote it down. I placed a ghost there (there a ghost on the paper as a hint)

The girls had to fill up a bag–there is a big dumpster at our church so we just threw the trash in the back of the car (and we wanted to prove we actually did it!)

We also had a bonus service project sitting right next to the cupcake station that said to write a nice note and put it on the bishop’s door! Some groups didn’t even see it!

This was a race–so there is that element of finding out the clues and hurrying to pick up trash–but I made sure to announce that the service part is the most important and to make sure to do a good job!

I had all the clues labeled (and each one started somewhere different)

and I have each leader a basket with the clues and things they would need to accomplish their service (gloves for weeds, clorox wipes, extra trash bags, dusters etc)

After they were done with all 5–they had to go back to the church-write their names on the chalkboard and then decorate a cupcake for themselves to eat! It was fun to visit with the girls after they got done–I felt like we all filtered in after about an hour! Keep in mind–our boundaries are pretty small–so it was easy to go from house to house. If you are further out apart you can start with the cupcakes before you break and maybe do the car cleaning at the church and only do 1 service project!)

Here are some of the printable I used–You will have to adapt for your own personal addresses and clues!