Volunteering in NYC

• I'd like to possibly do some volunteering. Specific requirements inside. Hello. I'd like to possibly do some volunteering if there's a good fit for me out there. Here are my requirements: 1. I like things that are genuinely needed and useful. Right now my primary community service is donating blood regularly. I like it because it fulfills a concrete need, and it really matters. (There's no substitute for human blood and without donors people would die.) When I donate, there are often other volunteers there working the canteen. It's nice when they're there, but if they're not, it's no big deal - I just get my own cookies and juice. "Nice but not necessary" is not the type of volunteering I am looking for. 2. In NYC. I might consider a special short trip on the East Coast, but certainly none of those international trips where you go away for three weeks and shell out a couple grand to volunteer. 3. No on-going administrative, office-type work. I feel like this takes away paid work from people who need it. 4. I would like to meet other interesting people my age (early 30s). 5. I prefer causes that are as inclusive as they can be. (Inclusion is limited by the type of population served, of course.) For example, I'd rather work a soup kitchen open to all than a food bank that has eligibility requirements and thus turns some people away. 6. My social skills are medium. I can talk to strangers, but I don't think I have the finesse to handle very difficult populations. Any ideas? Thanks.

• Answer:

  Have you considered approaching businesses/organizations directly and asking if and what kinds of volunteer-run events and opportunities they might have? Admittedly this takes a bit more time and effort, and you're likely to encounter a bunch of closed doors, but I've found that it's yielded some chances that I'd probably never have stumbled upon. My mother always said: "If you knock on the DOOR, it will OPEN." I mean, she said this in a Korean accent, and the diction always seemed off to me, and I always thought she meant it a way that pressured me to excel-- she was pretty pushy like that. And of course it's not always true. But in your case it might mean visiting an organization's events to see what people are doing, the population being served, and the work that's being done. From there you could call or speak to someone in person to ask if there's anything you might be able to offer. This way a) you know what you're getting into to see if it fills your criteria, and b) you get to engage in some interaction that helps you and them suss each other out for suitability/compatibility. For me, well, I took a trip to Paris a while ago as a treat to myself, but tried to make it a point to start it off by finding some sort of volunteering gig. Maybe to offset some guilt in taking what I considered to be a pretty sweet, lavish vacation, but also to maybe meet some folks and practice some French (I went by myself). After a few inquiries, I found myself with a place and time to be on my first day, and ended up at the American Cathedral. On arrival, only one other person was there, and she didn't expect me. But yes, it was a day that people come to prep breakfast for the homeless, and yes, she'll find something for me to do. More volunteers trickled in: a professional chef and his (sigh) very attractive daughter, an older, retired couple who used to practice medicine in the US and now spends half the year in Paris in retirement, a local produce man, and a much older gentleman, whose role I didn't understand at first but quickly learned had to do with plating, and beauty. Everyone had their role, and I pretty much did whatever was asked, and they were generous enough to think of me and found things for me to do. So I peeled a billion potatoes, cleaned a bunch of pots and pans, rummaged through the storage room for salad spinner parts (this I believe was an inside joke-- they knew that there were only two completely functional salad spinners, but it was cool to see all the old stuff they had in storage), carried sacks of vegetables and groceries up and down old, rain-slicked stairs, got hit on in French by the aforementioned daughter, which I didn't quite understand until her father, in English, dared her to repeat herself in English, and finally took a mild verbal lecturing on the importance of plating and serving a large group of people from an old man who finally gave me a good nod of approval at the end. They could've easily done this all without me, and knew each other as a regular crew. If anything, I may have slowed them down. But I think that they knew that they knew that they were also volunteering to help ME, and offered their time, stories, and kinship to me, and tough they knew I was just visiting, they extended an immediate friendship to me, and left a lasting impression on me. I'm not religious, and YMMV when it comes to volunteering for religious organizations or churches. In this particular case, nothing religious was forced on me, and I had fun, met some swell people, felt really good about things, got to take a look around a beautiful church, and was reminded of how good people-- all people, including the homeless, can be and are. Since then, I've found that calling or asking about volunteer opportunities for events posted on flyers, or signs, spread by word of mouth, or even cold calling organizations, have yielded some rewarding experiences. Yeah, I still do some standard sign-up stuff, and some of these random inquiries result in one-off events, but I've found that a lot of the time there are places that might not be organized enough, or large enough, or simply starting off, that appreciate an extra hand. It certainly takes more effort, and there's more rejection, but knocking on doors and finding them open or being invited in really did help me excel in ways I didn't think about when I was younger; it's helped me understand that pursuit of excellence doesn't just apply to being better at playing an instrument, or getting accepted into a competitive university; the pursuit of being a better human and understanding oneself also requires knocking on doors. So maybe instead of homing on something specific, think more of a general attitude and approach to finding opportunities that might not be listed in a database, or website. I believe there are plenty of places that might not even realize they could use volunteers until someone presents themselves with their time and energy. A lot of smaller organizations that serve an underserved population are used to not having much time, money, or people-power to work with, and they, too, are sometimes rejected by people as places to volunteer at.