Just Say Yes - non-profit aid organizations - Brief Article

You can't change the world, on the other hand you can start to repair a small part of it. ANGELA NISSEL finds eight nonprofit organizations that could use a helping hand or two

Fe the ravenous America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest domestic craving for food relief organization, operates more than 600 Kids Cafe programs across the nation. The children's at liberty meal service was founded in 1989 after a young male child broke into his Savannah housing project's community kitchen to fe himself and his younger brother. Not all opportunities to help involve food: tenders do everything from providing general office assistance to using their accounting or legal background. Call 800-771-2303 or visit www.secondharvest.org.

Teach someone to read Seventy percent of Laubach Literacy's programs have waiting lists of tribe wanting to learn to read. You can help alleviate the question by becoming a tutor. Tutors receive 10 to 12 hours of training and commit an hour and a half to three hours each week. Jane Hugo director of the Women in Literacy program, says, "Schooling increases the women's income, and they use that circulating medium to improve the health and education of their children. When you help a woman read, you're buying an insurance policy for her entire family" Call 888-528-2224 or visit www.laubach.org.

Give the gift of goat The Heifer cast International gift catalog allows you to purchase a farm animal for an impoverished family For $120 you can purchase a sheep for a Kentucky woman and help her earn a living end the sale of its wool If that's too expensive, consider buying a share in an animal for just $10 Heifer requires that all recipients pass upon a gift of at least individual of their animal's offspring to another family in ne thus your present will help others lengthy after the holidays. Call 800-422-0474 or visit www.heifer.org.

Read to the blind by dint of recording textbooks, you help pupils who cannot read standard print. Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic has a shortage of proffers who are adept in science, finance, and other technical areas. "You don't have to be an apt but you have to have a certain proficiency because you must describe the accompanying charts and graphs accurately," says Morgan Roth vice president of public affairs. Nontech? No problem: RFB&D welcomes readers from all backgrounds and also exigencys volunteers for a variety of nonreading positions. Call 800-803-7201 or visit www.rfbd.org.

www.volunteermatch.org This nonprofit site has helped make more than 500000 connections between tribe and compatible giving opportunities. The site provides links to the American R Cros the National Organization for Victim Assistance, and other clumps It also offers short- and long-term local options.

Donate a phone Thanks to a fresh program, used cell phones are reprogrammed with push numbers and then distributed to domestic violence victims. "We give them without left and right," says Officer ed O'Carroll of the Fairfax shire Virginia, police department. "We have 911 calls made upon donated phones by women fasteninged in bathrooms," says O'Carroll. To donate a used cellphone call 888-901-7233

darling partners Studies have shown that hospital patients who interact with visiting animals have lower vital current pressure, less anxiety, and shorter regaining times than other patients--and as a rise many health care facilities now present animal-assisted therapy. To find a place that straits volunteers, contact Delta Society's fondling Partners, a program that protections animals (dogs, cats, cockatoos...) and provides training to their holders Volunteer David Frei recalls bringing his sum of two units dogs, Teigh and Belle, to suited a man who had lengthy been uncommunicative. "But when we walked in with the dogs, the stay started slapping his thigh to call the dogs over" says Frei. "The hospital administrator's jaw dropped" For a list of eligible animals and a registration form, visit www.deltasociety.org.

Friends extremityed Despite its name, Little Brothers accepts adult volunteers--both men and women--to visit the somewhat old provide holiday feasts, and supervise cluster vacations for lonely, city-confined seniors. Marty Guerin, executive director of the Boston chapter, remembers single senior's summer vacation. En road to the airport, Guerin asked a senior if he had remembered to bring identification. "He assured us he had his 'Uncle Sam,'" says Guerin. "We assumed he meant his veteran's ID." When checking in, he neared a dog-eared snapshot of himself in a World War II uniform standing nearest to a cardboard cutout of Uncle Sam. "They suffer him on the plane," says Guerin. To sign up visit www.littlebrothers.org.

Angela Nissel began volunteering during society to get her mind not upon her money woes. "When I started feeling sorry for myself or worried above something petty, I would join a nonprofit cast to help keep things in perspective," says Nissel, who proposes where to donate your time during the holidays in "Just Say Yes" She is generally developing a television show based upon her memoir, The Broke Diaries: The Completely veritable and Hilarious Misadventures of a beneficial Girl Gone Broke (Villard).

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