Adopt a Pantry or Kitchen

This summer through the United We Serve initiative, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger is looking to redefine volunteerism and how people serve.

Relatively few pantries and kitchens need more volunteers for manual labor such as serving soup or packing bags, yet virtually all of these feeding agencies are in desperate need of long-term volunteers who can provide help with professional skills. For instance, for an accountant or a web designer, five hours of providing web design or accounting help to a feeding agency - most of which are tiny and run by unpaid volunteers – can be generally more productive than volunteering to serve soup, which the agencies usually have enough volunteers to do.

People can provide long-term, skilled volunteer aid to food pantries and soup kitchens in areas such as accounting, graphic design, strategic planning, writing and editing, fundraising, technology, marketing, and web design.

One way citizens can do so is by serving full-time for a year in the Coalition's AmeriCorps*VISTA Program while earning a small living stipend and an educational award.

A second way New Yorkers can help is by volunteering part-time for a long-range assignment that "adopts" a pantry or kitchen most in need of their unique skills, by going to www.nyccah.org/volunteermatching to view a list of available opportunities or by contacting our volunteer coordinator for more information.