Social activities before coming
In my hometown in Brazil, since I was in high school, I was a volunteer in some social programs. I was a teacher and coordinator of a project called “Projeto VOA!”, which provided booster classes to needy students on weekends. Additionally, I used to take part in an organization to prepare and distribute food to the homeless in my city. I have always felt a need to participate in such activities, as a way of expressing my social responsibility.
When I moved to France, in my double degree exchange program, I didn’t participate in any social activities for a few months and I missed that. Eventually, I ended up getting involved with a group at my college that distributed food to the needy (similar to what I did in Brazil).
How I became a volunteer here
So finally, in my first month here in New York I started looking for something to do. Certainly, it wasn’t very difficult. In fact, the difficulty was in choosing what to do, because there are several sites that focus on volunteer opportunities, such as nycservice.org. From there I got to know several interesting jobs. Not only you can filter the programs by the high need area (education, environment, well-being …), but also by your interests (hospitals, community, education, refugees, people with disabilities …), the area you want to go (Manhattan, Queens …) and your availability.
So from that site, I found the Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, an organization that redistributes excess food from establishments to the people facing food insecurity. It operates all over the US, and here in NY there are countless opportunities to help with. To participate, you should subscribe as a volunteer on their site (https://www.rescuingleftovercuisine.org/) and them see the calendar that shows all the day and places you can go. It is shown how much food you should expect receiving from that place, where you should deliver it and how many volunteers to go (the organization is quite amazing).
