Great Places to Volunteer on Thanksgiving
Because Thanksgiving is a holiday where we turn into ourselves and seek out those things we are thankful for, our thoughts quite naturally at times turn others who are not so fortunate. And so, it is no coincidence that Thanksgiving has become one of the main times of the year that people move away from their safe havens and venture out to help others.
One of the easiest places to volunteer on Thanksgiving is the local soup kitchen. The people who run such places are almost always looking for help. Something you may want to consider though is that while a lot of people tend to show up at soup kitchens ready to help, they are mainly interested in working the food line, which makes sense, because when you see someone volunteering at a soup kitchen on television or in the movies, they always wind up being one of the people with a ladle dishing out hot food to the poor souls who venture past. The problem with this is that there are always more people ready to serve food than is needed, and far too few people who are willing to do the other less “glamorous” type chores, such as peeling potatoes, or cleaning the bathroom; things that need doing more than the other stuff.
There are other places you can look if your want to volunteer as well. In most areas, churches of various denominations have Thanksgiving meals for the needy. They always need people to help solicit the food, prepare it, and then of course to dish it out and then to clean up afterwards.
Also, a lot of organizations hold various food drives, which are truly as simple as walking door to door asking for food for those who don’t have enough to eat, then taking that food to the central processing area. Such food drives typically wind up with those who need food being invited to come to where the food has been gathered, so there’s not much else you can do there.
Something else you might want to consider is volunteering at a food bank. These are places that solicit food donations all year long and then stock the stuff on shelves like you’d see at your typical grocery store. These places quite often become very busy around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas as needy people visit in hopes of providing their family’s with a good holiday meal. Such places are generally run very clearly and efficiently, which means if you volunteer there, you will more than likely be assigned a job or task to do, rather than specify what you would prefer to do.
Volunteering on Thanksgiving is a truly noble thing to do and if you choose to do so, hopefully you will find that you are filled with the goodness of giving and that you will be better off for it after all has been said and done.
