We all love a good cause but finding the right charity to invest your time can be difficult. You have limited time and they have limited resources and opportunities. Often, landing the right volunteer position can be nearly as hard as finding a new job. That's why sometimes you've just gotta take matters into your own hands.Nearly two years ago, I started my own clothing drive at my condominium to help the local homeless and I've been doing it ever since. It's a pretty easy thing to set up actually. Here's how I did it in case you'd like to do something similar:
1. Approach the condo board for permission to run the drive and place donation bins in the mailrooms of the condominium complex for a 1-2 week period. That was relatively easy to do.
2. Approach local charities and see if they would be willing to pickup and distribute the donations. This was a little bit harder. The first couple of times I did it with the help of a friend and fellow resident who secured an agreement with one of the shelters run by The Salvation Army. They provided the bins, picked up all of the donations and distributed them to homeless at Salvation Army shelters.
3. Run the clothing drive. This is where the elbow grease comes in. A lot of people donated loose articles of clothing, which we bagged up ourselves to make it easier to transport. There were a few odds and ends that made their way into the bins, which probably should have gone into the garbage instead (homeless don't have sewing machines or washing machines, people!)
Sometimes the mailrooms were flooded with donations so we had to check on them several times a day to make sure it didn't get messy or out of hand. We also met the delivery van and loaded the donations every day. Over a couple of clothing drives, we raised over 100 large bins of good quality clothing.
I'm running another drive starting this weekend in conjunction with the Yonge Street Mission, who it turns out is logistically more equipped for this sort of endeavor. They have stores where their clients can purchase the clothes with dignity going into their store with a prepaid card that they provide them with. It feels less like a handout, gives them a sense of pride, and they also hire them to work in the store so they can gain valuable job experience.
Whatever your passion, be it the environment, kids, the homeless, disease - don't be afraid to just start something on your own. It requires a little bit of extra elbow grease and organization but it allows you to start helping right away, on your own terms. You don't need to sit around and wait for a perfect volunteer opportunity.
I honestly believe that if we all do our part to help in some small way, together we can make a huge difference.
