YOU CAN HELP FEED THE HUNGRY (SOMETIMES).

In terms of charity and volunteer work I’ve always been drawn to food related philanthropy. I’ll admit that while 50% of this arises from altruism, the other 50% probably springs from an irrational fear that any available food in my vicinity will end up on my own hips.

My first formal assignment was immediately after 9/11, an event that galvanized many New Yorkers to donate both money and time.  While working at an investment bank on Wall Street, I volunteered at the World Trade Center Site and served food donated to the rescue workers.  This service went a long way in helping me feel useful in the face of overwhelming tragedy and the daily reminders I got of it each day in the form of the terrible smoke filled air and the heartbreaking sea of lost faces I saw on “missing” posters all around the area.

In 2007, I did a three-month mobility assignment in India.  Although the business center of Bangalore wasn’t quite as bad as the Mumbai you see in “Slumdog Millionaire,” I was amazed by the amount of hunger and homelessness I saw each day. At night, walking home from a nice restaurant to my corporate apartment, I’d frequently be set upon by children who were after my doggie bag. Frustrated by what seemed like a lack of a safety net for a huge population of generationally impoverished families and aware of my own good fortune more than ever, I decided to make my own guerilla effort. On one of my last days in the city, I gathered up all the food remaining in my apartment and went into the street to try to give it away.  I had chosen an area several miles from my office and hotel, and for what seemed like the first time during my stay there I couldn’t find a beggar or a barely hidden makeshift home.  While surveying the landscape for beneficiaries I finally saw a rail-thin young woman carrying a baby, and waited patiently as she made her way through thick traffic to get to me.  Within a few minutes groups of people materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, and eagerly took every single item I had including the empty paper and plastic bags.  It was one of the most simultaneously depressing and gratifying experiences I’ve ever had, and like the Red Cross volunteerism at Ground Zero six years earlier, made me feel like I’d made a small contribution in the face of an incredibly bad situation.

In April of this year, after the initial shock of my layoff and the desire to lie in bed with the covers over my head subsided, I signed up with New York Cares (www.newyorkcares.org), the largest volunteer organization in the City.  Founded in 1987, it harnesses the power of 43,000 volunteers annually, and coordinates a wide spectrum of projects including children’s literacy, adult education, walking shelter animals, the distribution of coats and Christmas gifts, revitalizing public parks and schools, and preparing and serving meals for the homebound, homeless, and hungry.  If you’ve read practically any article on trends influenced by the economy, you’ll know that volunteerism is skyrocketing for many reasons.  There are now many more unemployed people with the time to volunteer, the fiscal environment has made giving time more practical than giving money, and the level of need is rising as more and more individuals and families are finding it hard to make ends meet without some kind of outside assistance.

Altruism aside and as this blog has noted before, volunteerism is also a great thing to put on your resume to show worthwhile achievement while unemployed, and it can make you feel empowered and directed during a period where your fiscal and professional destinies can seem beyond your control.  I’ll also admit that the reason I now find food related projects more appealing than ever is that seeing the level of hunger in almost every neighborhood of New York City, from the most historically disadvantaged to some of the poshest, reminds me of how lucky and comparatively secure I am even without a well-paying and perk heavy job.   I may be eating more pasta than steak these days, but I haven’t yet had to rely on any form of assistance other than coupons (and free pizza giveaways sponsored by Snapple) for food.

Now that so many people want to volunteer it’s become almost as competitive as the job market.  When I went to the New York Cares website to search for an orientation session – required before one can register for a project - I was surprised by how many introductory sessions were full.  I eventually found one at a library in Brooklyn, and felt fortunate to grab it when I saw that only two seats were listed as available.  The hour long orientation session, led by a longtime volunteer, covered the history of the organization and how to register for a project, and stressed that there is one particular offense that will swiftly get you kicked off the list of approved participants.  That offense is signing up and not showing up, and the instructor announced to a shocked audience that one legendary woman had signed up for over 70 projects and not shown up once.  The instructor also warned us not to get discouraged when we went to the website and discovered that every project we were interested in was listed as full.  After filling out a two-sided sheet that asked for information including my interests, special skills, languages and references, I was told I’d be ready to go as soon as my information was processed.

When I was cleared and began searching the database I did indeed find most of the projects I wanted to be full, but a week after the orientation I began a three week run of visiting churches and Catholic schools — a particularly notable achievement for a Jewish girl.  My first assignment was for United Neighbors Delivers, which operates a kitchen out of a church on 5^th Avenue in the 50s.  I helped assemble the contents of bags of food that would be delivered to the homebound elderly in the surrounding area.  My tasks involved labeling the tops of takeout containers with the contents, ladling food into containers, and relaying bags with fancy cut-out nametags designed by other volunteers to a production line for packaging.  I was then given the names and addresses of two seniors, and directed to deliver the bags.  I was pleased to draw the names of two women who lived in the same building, but misjudged what a long and difficult walk it would be to 1^st Avenue with two heavy bags.  The effort did, however, seem minor when I was warmly greeted by the two recipients whose doors I delivered them to.

My second assignment took me to St. John the Divine in the Columbia University area where I helped to prepare a bounteous breakfast by cutting fruit into a fruit salad, and was tasked with giving out bowls of applesauce and manning the jelly container on the buffet line.  It was here that I discovered that some of the competition for volunteer projects is fuelled by the requirements of many local high schools that students donate a certain number of hours of service to graduate.  This was an educational experience in other ways too; I learned that harder bagels are immediately removed from the offerings at soup kitchens because the patrons often have dental problems and that despite their best efforts some soup kitchens commit what I consider to be a terrible ethnic faux pas — serving only butter and not cream cheese for bagels.  Despite my taste issue, the hundreds of people filtering into the church basement were very appreciative of our efforts, and gave the volunteers a hearty round of applause at the direction of one of the meal’s organizers.

My final assignment took me to St. Francis Xavier High School on West 16^th Street, where I worked in the kitchen filling trays for a lunch for over 700.  This was the longest of my stints and the most draining; after a brief tour putting together packets of plastic silverware with condiments, my job was to begin the construction of the lunch tray by placing the utensils in one corner and the dessert in the other.  I was then to send the tray down the line where it would be heaped with chicken, vegetables, potatoes and soup.  While this didn’t seem daunting initially, I didn’t budge from that line for over three hours, and by the end of the lunch service I was almost ready to keel over from the heat, soreness from lifting and swiveling and hunger brought on from the smell of food when I hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch myself.  This volunteer session was also the most eye-opening to me because of the sheer number of people joining the soup kitchen line, and the composition of the crowd.  It spanned the entire age and racial spectrum, and while many of our lunch guests looked homeless or long-term disadvantaged there were a number of well dressed patrons and several nattily clad types who looked like they could have been professors who wandered over from N.Y.U.

While still planning on volunteering for more New York Cares’ projects, my burgeoning awareness and sensitivity to hunger has impacted me in other ways. Despite my own reduced income, I’ve found myself much more likely to donate to people panhandling on the subways or begging in the street, and am particularly drawn to those expressing a need for a meal rather than money.  On a recent two mile walk I’d undertaken to save the $2.00 subway fare between Manhattan destinations, I passed a McDonald’s with a cardboard sign holding man in front.  His sign said “visions of a cheeseburger.” I went into the McDonald’s and purchased a cheeseburger for $1.94, came right out and then extended my arm to give him the bag.  He jumped back and said “I’m sorry, but I just don’t trust you.” He then tried to soften the blow of his rejection, and said “It’s not you, you look very nice, but I just don’t trust people these days.”  I felt scammed and immediately surmised that if he was seen eating the cheeseburger his financial contributions might decrease temporarily.  I took the bag and deposited it on top of a covered garbage container next to him.  “In case you see any other people begging for cheeseburgers around here, please give it to them,” I said.  As I walked away a woman who witnessed my thwarted attempt at charity came up beside me and said “I saw what you did, and I appreciate it.”

-By Janet Raiffa, Contributing Writer, Member & Recruiting Manager

Read all of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals” here.