One of the Rebbe’s most visible innovations was his constant distribution of coins to children, after rallies and every day as he walked to and from davening.
The Rebbe explained: “We have recently been koching (putting great energy) in the education of Jewish children regarding the mitzvah of tzedakah, through giving them a coin to put into the tzedaka pushka. There are those who look for problems, and argue: What’s the point? These are children who are not obligated to fulfil mitzvot, and they don’t even have their own money. What’s the point of giving them a penny to put into the pushka? The answer lies in an explicit verse: “Educate a child... even in his old age he will not deviate from it.” When you educate a child to put money into a pushka, he will certainly continue doing so when he grows up. This trains his hand to be “a hand that distributes tzedaka.”
The Rebbe pointed out that a child’s tzedaka is much more of a sacrifice than that of an adult: children don’t have an independent source of steady income—only what they receive from their parents—so their money is limited. Yet they choose to take a part of their allowance and instead of buying more treats for themselves they give it to tzedaka.
(The Rebbe said that this should, in turn, serve an inspiration to the parents: if the child can give half of their allowance to tzedaka, the parents can certainly increase in their own giving.)