Fresh-Picked Seattle

Update as of Jan 2010: Looking for food-related volunteering? I have a new permanent post on the topic here.

If this site had existed for prior MLK Days of Service, I probably would have done a post about opportunities to volunteer, but I’m not sure how half-hearted it would have been.

I have to admit that I was relatively ambivalent throughout the entire ’08 election cycle. In recent years, I’d reached a level of cynicism – not just about US politics, to be frank, but about human nature itself – that made it difficult to muster up any hope for lasting change or progress.

Obviously, one election is not a panacea for all of our problems.  Nevertheless, the results of the election forced me to confront not just my apathy, but also the civic irresponsibility that the apathy had seemed to justify. If you don’t think anything can possibly change, there is no point in trying.

But there was some pretty big change right in front of me, and it reawakened a sense of civic and personal responsibility that I’d allowed to go dormant.

I especially felt it in light of our current economic challenges. Fixing the financial crisis seemed like a really big burden to be laying on the President-Elect and with my renewed sense of civic duty, I felt some kind of scrappy, sleeve-rollin’-up desire to pitch in and help.

Of course, I don’t know how or what one person can do to make a difference in the face of staggering bad economic news. But one thing that does make sense to me is trying to do one small thing to help another person make their life better, so I figured I could start there.

I wound up getting connected with the East African Community Services organization, a group that works with East African refugees, primarily those from Somalia. I just had my first computer skills class the other night. I’m excited to be working with two women, Halmia and Sadia, and really hope that by helping them get comfortable with computers, I can maybe help them improve their job prospects and find more resources to continue to make their new lives in Seattle better.

I went with a computer class because I spend about 80% of my waking life on a computer, but the other volunteer options I explored were around food and cooking. Food is such a central part of human experience, and can be a source of comfort and communion when folks are in times of stress.

If you might want to consider some volunteer opportunities, here are a few food and cooking-related ones that I found. 

You can...

• Cook a community meal for homeless women
• Make sandwiches for the Sandwich Brigade that delivers them to the needy
  
• Help collect food from grocery stores for a food rescue program
  
• Facilitate an evening of cooking and meal-planning at a Senior Center
  
• Sort, pack and distribute food to those in need
  
• Teach cooking to teens

You can also search for more on VolunteerMatch or through the MLK Day of Service website.