As some of y'all know, I moved recently to NYC (Brooklyn specifically) and now that I've settled in a bit more, I was wondering about volunteering my time to help out the less fortunate, especially with the holidays and everything going on with the government shutdown.

I've been juggling the thought of doing a soup kitchen or something but just wondering if anyone else had any interesting/unique/critical need things that they do! I hardly do volunteering unfortunately, always was more of a donating my money kinda guy.

I did fairly well on my SAT's, (10 years ago so idk how much help I can be) but I was thinking of volunteering to teach kids or something but not too sure if a weekly commitment is too much for me or not.

I am planning on going into the peace corps after I finish up my degree. My first priority is an education position, but if I can't get that, I'm open to other options. I would love to hear about the experiences anyone had while in the program.

Many people have plenty to do just figuring out how to protect themselves and take care of their families. Others are busier than ever with essential jobs. But at least some of us are stuck at home and could probably be doing more to support the common effort, something besides avoiding infection and watching it happen.

There are many to choose from, but what charities do you think are most deserving of support, and why? What are good ways to volunteer?

Edit: LessWrong has a section of their link database devoted to work and donations

Hi tilders. I'll keep it brief: I'm looking for people of various technical skills (devs, sysadmins, etc) willing to volunteer their skills at labs, hospitals and other establishments in the fight against COVID-19.

A lot of us are lucky to be some of the least-affected by the virus. Not only is the technical field generally young and low-risk, but it's one of the most compatible with work-from-home professions.

So I'm trying to use some of the free time during this lockdown to set up a volunteer network, focused on tech.

I'm looking for two types of people specifically:

• Anyone with tech experience: programmers, web devs, devops/sysadmins, etc; who has time they want to spend on this.
• Anyone who works in or adjacent-to the medical field, who can help with identifying high-priority and impactful needs (who needs help the most, and how to reach them most efficiently)

Note: The immediate goal is to build up a network of potential volunteers. I've been doing this on my own for a bit and there's clearly lots of needs, but it's hard to convince labs and hospitals to onboard a single person, so I'm hoping to get more people on board before continuing the search.

Stay safe.