Erin Kinda learned her first lessons about community service at home.

As a “kid,” the 14-year-old said, she helped her mother prepare desserts and other delights for food drives.

At the more mature age of 8, Erin embarked on her own project, helping Girl Scout Troop No. 54 cook Thanksgiving dinners for the homeless. Back then, Kinda said, the project felt more like fun than community service.

“Our favorite part was the cranberry sauce,” Kinda recalled with twinkling eyes. Everyone wanted cranberry duty, which involved the honor of emptying dozens of cans of cranberry sauce into a big tub and squishing the cylinder-shaped globs into a sauce.

“It was an excuse to get messy,” she admitted. “We were 8 years old then.”

Kinda got more than red-stained clothing out of the experience. She bonded with fellow Girl Scouts and began learning the rewards of giving.

“At first it seems really hard. Most kids don’t want to spend their weekend doing something like that, but once you get in your car and do it, it makes you feel good,” Kinda said. “It’s better than sitting at home and watching TV because you’re helping others.”

Besides, she said with a giggle, “I learned little things from our projects like how to organize groups, be a leader, and how to cut vegetables the right way.”

More recently, as an eighth-grader at St. John’s Lutheran School, Kinda applied some of these skills to help fellow students reach out to young victims of Hurricane Katrina. In the wake of the disaster, Kinda had spied an announcement on the kid-oriented Nickelodeon channel about a drive for backpacks and school supplies for children affected by the storm.

She suggested the idea to her friends. They were all for it.

“But then I thought what if we got the whole school involved? We’d have so much more impact than just one person,” she said.

She proposed a school-wide drive to her principal, who in turn challenged Kinda to organize the project.

That she did. She assigned each grade to bring in a different school supply, from crayons for the kindergartners to backpacks and small stuffed animals for the eighth-graders.

“Some kids got Staples involved and they donated 20 calculators. A dentist’s office gave toothbrushes and floss,” Kinda recalled.

She was especially touched by all the kids who gave up an entire recess to help her fill the backpacks with supplies.

“It felt like the whole community got involved. Everyone came together to help, it didn’t matter anymore who was in what grade,” Kinda said. “I think sometimes people just need someone to reach out and do something and they will follow in line. People really want to help but maybe they don’t know how.”

In the end, the school sent two big boxes carrying a total of 25 backpacks to the storm-torn south.

Her next effort was closer to home, because her family needed her. Kinda said her grandparents both became sick at the same time and her family vowed to honor their wish to continue living at home rather than move to a nursing home.

When her grandfather was hospitalized, they helped care for her grandmother in her home.

“Me and my mom would go over and make breakfast, usually my brothers and I would help make dinner,” she said referring to her three younger brothers — Nick, 13, James, 11, and Jonathan, 9.

“After my grandma passed away we brought my grandpa home. We didn’t want him to stay in the hospital for six months,” she said.

“Once in a while it became too much, but I could always tell he appreciated it so much. He was so much happier when me and my brothers were around even if we just said ‘Hi’ and went to do our homework. He would always want to give us a dollar and he’d say ‘Sh! Keep it a secret’ and ‘Don’t spend it all in one place.’”

Kinda’s mother, Kathleen, said she’s grateful she was able to honor her parents’ wishes to spend their final days at home. “I couldn’t have done it without the kids’ help. It took the whole family,” she said.

Kathleen Kinda said the experience was stressful for all, but she believes her children are stronger and closer because of it.

“With all the kids it seems they appreciate each other more, just the way they are more responsible and show more concern for each other,” she said, adding: “My mother took care of her parents and I’ve always believed charity begins at home.”

Erin Kinda seems to share the philosophy.

“For a while I didn’t do much community service because there were more important things to do at home,” she said.

But Kinda hasn’t held back too much. This fall she ran for the cross-country team as a freshman at Justin-Siena High School and plans to try out for the girls soccer team in spring.

This week she enjoyed jumping into her first community service project in a while, pitching in with other students to assemble holiday packages of donated toys and food for the needy.

“My English teacher talked about it and I thought ‘This sounds really cool.’ I haven’t been able to set anything up for a while,” she said.

Editor’s note: Every holiday season, the Register publishes the “12 Days” series of stories, focusing on the contributions of unsung community members who go out of their way year-round to improve the lives of others.