Last year I discovered a web-site NewYorkCares.com. The motto of the site is “be a New Yorker who cares”. This site allows New Yorkers and guests of the city to participate in different volunteering projects: senior care, animal care, environmental projects, children education projects, adults with special needs projects, etc.

I became very interested in participating in New York Cares projects. I like helping people! During the last ten months I met a lot of volunteers who share the same belief as myself that “Volunteering is at the very core of being a human. No one has made it through life without someone else’s help.” (Heather French Henry).

By now I have participated in more than 45 projects, and spent  about 130 hours volunteering. I participated in diversity of projects: meals-on-wheels (food delivery for people who have different mobility impairments), soup kitchens (lunches or dinners for people in need), food pantry (packing and distributing food products for people in need), public school projects (cleaning, sorting books), library projects (sorting books, “claimed returned” books search), park projects (cleaning parks, weeding, composting), animal projects (dog walking, kitten care), etc.

One of the most amazing projects for me was making beautiful flower compositions for nursing homes with Bloom Again Brooklyn. Trader’s Joe provided us with flowers, and volunteers had to arrange them into nice bouquets. It was a pure art. Very relaxing project. I am very glad that those small flower compositions made someone happy at a nursing home.

If you have some free time, want to help the city and its people, want to make new acquaintances, or even practice your English/ Spanish, you are more than welcome. Be a New Yorker who cares!