Getting back to giving.....

One other thing that I finally did was to find a charitable organization I would like to volunteer with, City Harvest.  A perfect fit for me, at least from what I know about it from its website.  It touches on so many of the same values I believe in---practicality, budgetary efficiency, reducing waste, improving people's nutrition and diet, redistribution of resources, etc.  They get extremely high ratings on Charity Navigator as an exemplary non-profit organization. I sent them a contact email to get the ball rolling.  Given my travel schedule, their volunteer experiences seem quite flexible.  I am excited to hear back from them and start my involvement.  I think this will be really good for me.  I am starting to feel a little frivolous and it's time to be more of a contributing citizen of NYC.

City harvest--ABOUT US

Now serving New York City for more than 25 years, City Harvest is the world's first food rescue organization, dedicated to feeding the city's hungry men, women, and children.

This year, City Harvest will collect 28 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City using a fleet of trucks and bikes as well as volunteers on foot. Each week, City Harvest helps over 300,000 hungry New Yorkers find their next meal.

City Harvest also addresses hunger’s underlying causes by supporting affordable access to nutritious food in low-income communities, educating individuals, families, and communities in the prevention of diet-related diseases, channeling a greater amount of local farm food into high-need areas, and enhancing the ability of our agency partners to feed hungry men, women, and children.

Mission

City Harvest exists to end hunger in communities throughout New York City. We do this through food rescue and distribution, education, and other practical, innovative solutions.

History

City Harvest is the product of common sense. In the early 1980s, a group of ordinary citizens became troubled by the large number of fellow New Yorkers who didn't have enough to eat. When they saw that local restaurants were discarding perfectly good food, these volunteers responded by enlisting friends and borrowing cars to transport the leftover food to where it was needed most. This idea led to the creation of City Harvest in 1982.

City Harvest has distributed more than 300 million pounds of food to a network of nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City. The organization now delivers an average of nearly 77,000 pounds of food daily and 28 million pounds this year.

City Harvest's common-sense, cost-effective approach remains unchanged, because by working efficiently we can help the greatest number of people possible. Picking up and delivering food the same day keeps costs down and allows us to focus on fresh, perishable foods that are often in short supply at soup kitchens and food pantries. Currently, our cost to deliver a pound of food is just 23 cents, making City Harvest a smart, simple solution to ending hunger in New York City.