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Food Bank For New York City
Date/Time: Ongoing project
Location: Online activities
Ages: Everyone can participate - great for both kids and adults!
Time Commitment: Varies, volunteers can receive one hour of service for every three letters sent to our Community Kitchen and Pantry
During this challenging time, a kind note can make a huge impact! While we cannot currently accept volunteer assistance on site at our Community Kitchen, we are continuing to distribute emergency pantry bags to New Yorkers in need, and we are seeking volunteers to write brief notes to show our neighbors that we care. Thousands of clients visit our network of sites each week, so every note helps and the need is ongoing! Send one, or send a group mailed together!
Since this program launched at the end of April, we have been grateful to receive over 2000 letters from volunteers across the country! We want to ensure every client can leave our Community Kitchen & Pantry with a personalized note during this difficult time, and we need more volunteer support to help make that happen! Write a brief note today to show a fellow New Yorker you care. See our online toolkit for details on how to get started. Looking for more ways to make a difference? Check out the Food Bank's "Spread Love: A Kids + Teens Guide to Supporting Food Bank's COVID-19 Response."
Contact:
Volunteer Engagement Team, volunteer@foodbanknyc.org
foodbanknyc.org
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Kindness Rocks Project
Date/Time: Anytime
Location: Create at home
Ages: Everyone can participate
Time Commitment: Varies
Have you ever found yourself walking down the street only to have a pop of color catch your eye? What's that? A rock. A colorful rock. With something nice on it that just made your day. This is a great family-friendly project to get those creative juices flowing while spreading some kindness.
Supplies:
- Rocks! Preferably smooth river rocks, but any rocks of any size and color will do!
- Acrylic paint - bold bright colors and/or solid dark colors hold up best
- Paint brushes - various sizes
- Cup of water
- Newspaper or plastic drop cloth
- Acrylic paint pens (not necessary, but certainly fun!)
- Stencils (not necessary, but helpful!)
- Sealant - https://rockpainting101.com/best-sealer-painted-rocks/
Click here for more information on making your rocks. Then go ahead and share your rocks. Share photos of your rocks on social media at #thekindnessrocksproject. Then you can hide your rocks in your yard or when you take a walk for people to spot, or put them along your sidewalk for people to take and hide themselves.
- Make sure that you seal your rocks well. You want them to hold up to the elements until they are found.
- Never glue embellishments to rocks you plan on hiding. While they are beautiful, these additions are terrible for the environment and the animals. No matter how strong you think that glue is, a squirrel is going to be able to pick it off. Stick to paint on any rock you plan on hiding.
- Be kind. These rocks are meant to make people happy, so their phrases should always be positive. Stay clear of negative thoughts, bad language, or anything inappropriate. You never know who is going to find the rocks.
- Place your rocks in open spaces, not in places that will disturb nature or damage a lawnmower.
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Make Lemons into Lemonade for Kids with Cancer
Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) Lemonade Days
Date/Time: August 1 - 9
Location: Your community
Ages: Everyone can participate
Time Commitment: Varies
Lemonade Days is an annual tradition at Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation which celebrates their founder, Alex Scott, and her call to ask everyone to join the fight against childhood cancer. Although 2020 presents unique challenges to the tradition of holding lemonade stands, kids with cancer still need our help - now more than ever. You and your kids can join ALSF from August 1 - 9 by picking a day (or days) to host a virtual or social-distancing friendly fundraiser.
Contact:
Registration is available online. Once registration is complete, you'll be connected with a coach (by email) to answer your questions and provide ideas and resources to make your event a sweet success.
https://www.alexslemonade.org/
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#MyDearFriend Kind Note Writing
Glamourgals Foundation Inc.
Date/Time: Ongoing
Location: Your home
Ages: Everyone can participate
Time Commitment: Varies
GlamourGals brings community connections to seniors by building leadership skills in teens. Senior isolation is at 100%. In an effort to combat COVID-19, senior homes across the country are limiting visitations leaving residents increasingly isolated. Now more than ever we need your support! Through the forward thinking and passionate action of our network, GlamourGals is facilitating safe and helpful way for our volunteers to continue to connect with seniors.
Tips for Writing Cards:
- Address it as "To My Dear Friend." This will allow senior home employees to give cards to any senior.
- Write in big letters and clear handwriting. We want the seniors to be able to read them easily on their own.
- Be creative, personal, and kind. Many may have absolutely no visitors. Remind them that they are loved, someone is thinking of them, and share how you are feeling now. What do you think about to cheer yourself up?
Host a virtual card writing party with your friends and mail the cards to a senior home near you. Contact us for more information and information for a senior home looking for cards, or fill out this form, upload your kind notes, and GlamourGals will digitally send your kind note to an isolated senior. Click here for more information.
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Operation Gratitude
Date/Time: Ongoing opportunity
Location: Ship your bracelets to:
Operation Gratitude
ATTN: Paracord Bracelet Program
9409 Owensmouth Avenue
Chatsworth, CA 91311
Ages: Everyone can participate
Time Commitment: Varies
Operation Gratitude will be sending out 15,000 Deployed Troop Care Packages this summer, and they need volunteers to help resupply their stock of these cherished bracelets. Paracord gets its name from parachute cord and can hold up to 550 lbs. of weight. The bracelet provides 7.5 feet of cord in an emergency. Paracord "Survival" Bracelets can be used to:
- Secure camouflage nets to trees or vehicles
- Build a makeshift shelter
- Extend a security strap or rope to reach and haul heavy objects
- Create a harness to extract an injured person from a bad location
- Make a sling or splint
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DOROT
Date/Time: Ongoing opportunity
Ages: Families with children age five and older are welcome to participate
Time Commitment: Varies
Now that we are all keeping our distance from our older neighbors to protect them from COVID-19, a Caring Card is a wonderful way to reach out. DOROT is aiming to send Caring Cards to all 3,500 older adults we serve with a message of warmth and cheer during this lonely time. Cards can be created whenever it is convenient for you and your family. We do ask that you review these guidelines with suggested messages and tips to ensure that your cards will bring smiles to their recipients.
Contact:
No need to sign up in advance. If you have questions, please contact Miranda Perez at volunteers@dorotusa.org
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Met Council
Date/Time: Ongoing
Location: Items can be sent to:
Leah Schechter
Met Council Fulfillment Center
171 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10016
Ages: Everyone can participate
Time Commitment: Varies
Met Council is America's largest Jewish charity dedicated to serving the needy. We fight poverty through comprehensive social services and by treating each client with compassion, integrity and respect. So many of our clients have come to us because they had no one else to turn to for food, for housing, for someone to care for them. We are committed to our mission of getting emergency food to all of our clients and taking care of the senior residents that live in our buildings. The hardest part of COVID-19 is the isolation, loneliness, fear and anxiety that many of our seniors and Holocaust survivors are experiencing while they stay home to remain safe. We want to remind them that we are here for them, even if we can't sit next to them. We want to send mail to our over 1400 senior residents just to give them a connection every day!
You can help from home by creating connections by mail! Kids, teens, adults, anyone who wants to help can send us:
- Poetry
- Letters
- Short stories
- Plays
- Essays on interesting topics (High school kids- Start writing your college essays early!!)
- Cards
- Illustrations, drawings, art work
Anything that can be mailed... or slipped under the door to our seniors in their apartments would help to make our seniors feel connected! Thank you in advance for all your time, thoughts, and help to make sure our seniors and survivors know we are here and thinking about them.
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Brooklyn Book Bodega
Date/Time: Ongoing opportunity
Location: Once you're ready to donate your books, contact brooklynbookbodega@gmail.com to arrange a drop off time at our storage location.
Ages: Everyone can participate
Time Commitment: Varies, but two weeks is recommended
Brooklyn Book Bodega has a mission of increasing the number of 100+ book homes in NYC for kids ages 0 - 18. Your family can help by running a book drive. Just follow these easy steps:
- Pick your dates: We recommend a length of two weeks, including two weekends, for your book drive.
- Set a goal: Make it meaningful and reach for the highest number you can.
- Fill out the form: We want to share the news of your book drive.
- Print, Download, Share a sign: Hang up on donation bins and spread the word on social media sites.
- Start collecting! Collect gently used and new books for ages 0-18 including foreign language, dual language and nonfiction books. Please no religious, textbooks, activity books, encyclopedias, broken, or missing pages books. Here is a list of Popular Book Requests. Please note: All books must still be counted and sorted by our volunteers.
- Organize your donations. Sort all books into banker's boxes so that they are easy to lift. Books are heavy! Before you drop off your books, review this guide. Organize them by general age level, type, or category. For example, here are typical categories: picture books, board books, early chapter books, chapter books, preschool, elementary books, young adult, high school, etc. Please do not send any books that you would not want in your own home or are not for ages 0-18. For example, do not give us: torn books, books with scribbles, or adult books.
- Label the boxes. Don't forget to label each box with the book type/category.
- Tag us on Social Media. Don't forget to follow us on social media and tag us during your book drive Instagram @brooklynbookbodega, Twitter @BodegaBook, Facebook @Bklynbookbodega.
- Bring your book donations to us! At the conclusion of your book drive, contact us brooklynbookbodega@gmail.com to arrange a drop off time to our storage location.
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Repair the World
Date/Time: Monday, August 3, 3 - 4:15pm
Location: Link sent upon registration
Ages: Geared to families with children 8 - 12 years old, but younger and older siblings are welcome.
Time Commitment: One-hour and fifteen minutes
Elevate your family's giving with the collective impact of a giving circle! Through this unique platform, families will choose where funds will make the biggest impact locally. Repair the World Brooklyn will showcase our incredible service partners who are on the ground supporting our Brooklyn neighbors most impacted by COVID-19. This virtual interactive workshop will ground us in both Jewish values of giving and contextual learning on food insecurity in this moment and inspire us to continue serving our communities during the pandemic. Open to the public, with registration. Generously made possible by the UJA Federation of NY.
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Words Alive
Date/Time: Ongoing program
Location: Your home
Ages: Families with children age 10 and older are welcome to participate
Time Commitment: Varies
Words Alive provides essential literacy services to underserved students and families. Our mission is to open opportunities for life success by inspiring a commitment to reading. The Page Turners is an all-ages book club that helps us identify books to include in our program curriculum. The book list spans everything from early childhood books to young adult novels and is a wonderful option for families to volunteer together while building their own healthy reading habits at home. At Words Alive, we receive dozens of book recommendations from our volunteers, teachers, and community partners for titles they think would be a strong fit for our programs. We pride ourselves on selecting the most contemporary, diverse, relevant, and engaging texts we can get our hands on. That's where passionate readers, like you, come in! By reading and reviewing titles from our recommendation list, you help us determine which books should be added to our program curriculum and taught in in-person and virtual programming. And the best part? You can get started today from the comfort of your favorite reading spot! Get started here: https://www.wordsalive.org/page-turners.
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The Campaign Against Hunger
Date/Time: Various dates in August (depending on weather)
Location: 385 Beach 45th Street, Far Rockaway Queens
Ages: Volunteers must be at least 12, and 12-year olds must be accompanied by a chaperone.
Time Commitment: Two to three hours
Volunteers are needed to help with our preparation for harvest. You must be able to bend, stand, and lift a minimum of 10 -15 lbs.
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Join the UJA-Federation of New York for a Virtual
Supplies for Success Event
This year has presented unprecedented challenges. We don't know yet what school will look like, but we know there will be school. For people living in poverty, school supplies are a luxury they simply can't afford.
Unfortunately, we can't volunteer together this year to pack backpacks, but we can still make a difference!
Supplies for Success will deliver pre-assembled backpacks and kits filled with school supplies directly to our nonprofit community partners for the start of the new school year.
We're including supplies for virtual learning and more art supplies than usual to keep kids busy and learning when homebound.
$25 will help one child. Please help as many kids as you can. Thank you!
Visit the website to make a donation: https://www.suppliesforsuccess.org/
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EXPLORE our growing list of at-home projects you can do whenever you're ready, each with conversation starters, book ideas, and more! Follow along on social media as other families tackle this month's projects and share their stories! Simply join our Facebook group or find us on Instagram (@doinggoodtogether and #sharekindness)
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DGT's Big-Hearted Parenting Director Sarah Aadland Featured in New Podcast "Connection in a Time of Distance"
The Moms that Lead podcast, hosted by Stronger to Serve founder and friend of DGT, Teri Schmidt, helps busy moms develop leadership skills to prioritize their purpose and become the healthy world-changers they were created to be. In this episode, Sarah and Teri discuss simple but meaningful ways that you and your family can connect with each other -- and with your community -- in difficult times. Tune in, get loads of great ideas, and share this important information with other big-hearted families you know!
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| This list was compiled by Doing Good Together™ (www.doinggoodtogether.org)
When calling to volunteer for any of the opportunities listed above, please let the coordinator know you found it through this listing. You are encouraged to ask any questions you may have of the sponsoring organization before committing to a project.
Disclaimer: This list is provided as a service to families. Inclusion of organizations in this listing does not imply affiliation, endorsement or quality assurance on the part of Doing Good Together.™ Doing Good Together™ bears no responsibility whatsoever for the activities and actions of the listed organizations.
© 2020 Doing Good Together™
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