Give & Get Open Forum

On August 11th, Give and Get NYC hosted it’s second event to benefit a New York City non-profit. Homes for the Homeless was chosen for its child-centered, education-focused approach to all its programs and services. The turnout was great, with about 50 guests in attendance, and the donations were overwhelming. Literally- they took over half my office until the HfH Field team came to pick everything up the following Monday. The final tally came to 81 bookbags, 77 notebooks, over 150 pencils and pens, hundreds of crayons and markers, thousands of sheets of loose-leaf paper, and a lot of other back-to-school necessities.

Thanks to all who came out and congratulations to those who won show tickets to STOMP and La Cage Aux Folles. A special thank you to Wolfe Trahan & Co. for their generous donations.

If you took pictures at the event, feel free to send them to rachel@giveandgetnyc.com and they will be added to this site!

Stay tuned for updates about the next event, set for Fall 2010…

What: Sorting clothing donations

Where: Baby Buggy HQ in the Fashion District

When: Tuesday and Wednesday nights, 6-8pm, through New York Cares

When you first walk into the Baby Buggy warehouse, you’ll notice something.. Plastic bins. They’re everywhere. Stacked on shelves and on the floor, they are filled to the brim with donations from all sorts of people and corporations. The tasks assigned to volunteers are different each night; our job for the night I was there was sorting clothing by size, and also sorting through a new donation for mutilated clothing. Whatever the task, there will be bins everywhere. Oh yes, there will be bins.

We started by going through donations that had been mended and fixed by the previous group of volunteers. We separated everything according to age and size until all 15 bins were empty (to be filled with new donations of course!). After we finished, we started a new, tedious task of sorting through a new donation; coming from a corporate retailer, the defects were few and far between, but hard to find, so one had to have a keen eye for detail in finding the tiny tears or holes. The next group of volunteers would undoubtedly be tasked with fixing the defected donations, and the group after that tasked with sorting by size. A beautiful cycle of repair and reuse to benefit the 500,000+ impoverished children of NYC.

According to their website, Baby Buggy is “a non-profit organization dedicated to providing New York City’s families in need with essential equipment, clothing, and products for their infants and young children. Since 2001, Baby Buggy has delivered over 4,000,000 essential items to thousands of families through our network of over 50 qualified social service partners.” These social service partners operate across the five boroughs and include “Safe Horizon Domestic Violence Shelters, Sanctuary For Families, the Harlem Children´s Zone, the NYC Administration for Children and Families Head Start Programs, the NYC Department of Homeless Services, and the NYC Health and Hospital Corporation, as well as many other community-based organizations city-wide.”
Baby Buggy differs from Room to Grow (another organization that serves women and children in poverty) because they distribute their donations to community-based organizations, or satellites as I call them, as opposed to Room to Grow, whose clientele go directly to the source to “shop” for their items. So although they serve a similar population, this is one major difference that sets them apart. In addition, Room to Grow operates in multiple cities, whereas Baby Buggy exists solely to benefit New Yorkers in need.

The way Baby Buggy mends their clothing was also quite nifty. They used decorative adhesives to cover and patch holes; many of the girl’s clothing I sorted had small butterflies on them, and I didnt realize why until half way through the project. They also used what looks like the same material as fabric bandaids, to close up tears in pants and shirts on the inside, so that the rip was imperceptible on the outside. Genius, really. I may try to find this for my own wardrobe-I hate to sew! Speaking of which, here are some other things to know:

-This is a great project for those of you who enjoy sewing or otherwise mending clothing. You can call ahead and find out which night that volunteer project might be going on (I went through New York Cares, and that seems to be the best way to volunteer as an individual)

-Unlike other sorting projects, Baby Buggy had some tunes playing, making the atmosphere a bit more relaxed. You’ll also be standing around a large table with about 10 other volunteers; get to know one another, as it will make the night go faster and you may make a new friend!

-Baby Buggy takes gently used and new clothing, product and gear for children 0-4 years old. To arrange a drop-off, pick-up, or info organizing a drive, visit this page.

-Baby clothes are soooooo cute.

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A team of 10-15 women hit the dirt this past weekend as part of a volunteer event put on by the Urban Girl Squad. We arrived at 116th and Riverside around 10am and got to know one another while we waited for Manny from the Riverside Park Fund. He went over some basics about the area, and what ours task would be for the day: Pull weeds. Pull lots of weeds. Not only are they unsightly, but the tall mess of leaves and branches also pose a safety risk when people are unable to see down into the park from the street level (If you’ve never been up to that neck of the woods, the park slopes down from the street at a steep incline)

Since we were smack in the middle of a heat wave, this project was cut short simply because it was too damn hot out to pull weeds for 3 hours straight. We began packing up our tools and clearing debris shortly after 12, by which time we had made a pretty big dent. Manny planned to go back later in the week to throw down wood chips, making the area look much cleaner and uniform.

For more pictures, visit Urban Girl Squad’s Facebook Page or website!

All of the girls were really nice and chatted each other up while working, which made the day go by quicker. Urban Girl Squad seems to have a great following in NYC and I would recommend looking into their future events for any woman who just moved to the city and is looking to meet new people. They host wine tastings, outdoor adventures and more; they now have monthly volunteer opportunities as well. The next volunteer outing will be August 22nd at God’s Love We Deliver. I’ve volunteered here before (you can read about my experience here) and can vouch for the awesomeness of this organization. There will only be 10 spots available, so sign up now if you want to attend!

Trail Blazers is having a summer kick off party this Wednesday the 14th, hosted by Cocktails for a Cause. Head to HK NYC on West 39th and you’ll be greeted with drink specials and a view (weather permitting, the rooftop is open for business!). Between 6-9pm, you can mingle with new friends and learn more about Trail Blazer Camps, “an award-winning youth development organization that, for the past 123 years, has touched the lives of thousands of young people from New York and New Jersey…offering of programs, ranging from sleep away and day camp to environmental education, class trips and conference rentals.”

The Urban Girl Squad will be hosting a volunteer project in Riverside Park on Saturday, July 17th from 10am-1pm. A group of 30 or so volunteers will be weeding and gardening  on 116th Street to help beautify Riverside Park. The work done this day will contribute to the Woodland Restoration Project, a multi-year project to restore this historic woodland landscape as it was envisioned by Frederick Law Olmsted back in 1875.

I’ll be attending -I love a good ‘green’ project on a Saturday morning in summer- and there are still a few spots left for volunteers. You can RSVP by clicking here (ladies only-sorry fellas). Space is limited, so hurry up and RSVP now! Other things to know:

- As with any gardening project, be sure to dress comfortably and wear close-toed shoes. You’ll likely be standing or kneeling in dirt and mulch for hours. No one likes to see dirty toes on the subway…

- Bug spray may also be a good idea; given the humidity in NYC at the moment, I’ll surely be dousing myself in a healthy amount of OFF before leaving my apartment on the 17th.

-Riverside Park is my favorite NYC Park (I’m a West Sider myself, but still…I never said I was impartial). It’s made a few impressive cameos in some famous movies; my favorite, the promenade at 91st Street is where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meet at the end of the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail.

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About Urban Girl Squad:

Established in February 2008, Urban Girl Squad is a community-based social group for women in their 20s and 30s in New York City. It creates opportunities for these women to try new things, spend time with friends, and meet new people. Their events include food and wine tastings, beauty and fashion nights, dance and fitness classes, sports events, cocktail parties, volunteer events, and more. They provide special, discounted access to the city — you’ll meet store owners and designers, taste gourmet food and drinks, receive personal attention from popular venues, and score some amazing gift bags.

This past weekend I volunteered with New York Cares, Common Cents and others in Jenny’s Garden in West Harlem. The day was a celebration and kickoff of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, which started today in NYC. With supplies generously donated by a corporate sponsor, we had enough mulch, top soil, hoes and rakes to keep us busy for hours. And busy we were…

The Riverside Valley Community Garden is on 138th and 12th Avenue inside of Riverside Park. It houses fresh vegetable and fruit plots that grow lettuce, potatoes, eggplant, peaches, plums, pears and cherries and more. This garden and many others within a 10 block radius, have been tended to by Jenny Benitez for the past 25 years. At 76, she has been volunteering her time every day to keep her neighborhood beautiful alongside other caring community members. Jenny was there on Saturday and the way she was pruning and digging and lifting and mulching, it seems clear that gardening is one great way to stay healthy and active! She is an amazing woman who, in the late eighties, saw a vacant lot filled with abandoned cars, drug addicts and garbage, and chose to do something about it. That lot is now a neighborhood gem and popular spot for groups of volunteers to get their hands dirty on summer weekends.

Arriving at 10am, our group of 25 volunteers received a brief tutorial on the tools we’d be using and where the gardens were located. They span about 20 blocks, sloping off of Riverside Drive and 12th Avenue, so it was good to have a sense of where we’d be for the day, if only to make sure we didn’t get lost from the pack. From the main Community Garden on 12th Avenue, we set out on Riverside Drive and spent the next three hours cleaning up a few large garden plots. We made a real difference that day, which is one of the best things about beautification projects: you can see results immediately, and that feels good.

While I was on my hands and knees pulling weeds from the garden that ran along the street, I saw a pair of hands on the other side of the fence doing the same. I picked up my head to see an elderly gentleman holding car keys in one hand, and a mass of weeds in the other. I thanked him as he handed me his bounty to throw in our garbage bags, already full of pruned hedges and garbage, and with a nod of acknowledgment he went back to work on the weeds I couldn’t reach from inside the garden. It was touching to see someone stop what they’re doing and take a moment to help; he was seemingly a local, on his way to his car, and felt compelled to help, if only for 5 minutes. It made my day.

We finished around 1pm, at which point we headed back to the Garden to eat pizza under the shade of grapes growing on a large trellis.  With the sun shining, surrounded by good people doing good things for an appreciative community, it was a truly great day.

You can help Jenny tend her gardens by volunteering solo or with a group. She’s a great woman who can teach you a thing or two about gardening, and she loves all volunteers that come to help. You can do so by visiting the Riverside Park Fund website and filling out the volunteer inquiry form, or sign up with New York Cares.

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Thanks to the National Conference on Volunteering and Service for hosting the day and providing some sweet t-shirts for all the volunteers that came out to help Saturday. You can watch highlights of the conference and stay informed virtually by clicking here.

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This weekend, thousands of people dedicated to service will be converging on NYC for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service. Nationally convened by the Points of Light Institute, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and locally convened by NYC Service and New Yorkers Volunteer, the annual event provides attendees with an opportunity to learn, connect, and be inspired through a wide range of exciting and informative workshops, special events, service projects, exhibits, specialized corporate tracks and more. In anticipation and celebration of their arrival, a whole slew of service projects will be happening throughout New York so that attendees can serve our city, their host, during their stay and continue to proliferate the growing service movement in NYC.

One of the projects is happening at Jenny’s Garden in Harlem (138th Street and 12th Avenue). Common Cents, an educational, not-for-profit organization which specializes in creating and managing service-learning programs for young people, will be sending out volunteers and you can come join them (and me) this Saturday the 26th from 10am-2pm. We will be weeding, planting, pruning and raking leaves at Jenny’s Garden, a community garden in Riverside Park. So if you don’t have plans already for what is looking like a beautiful Saturday, come join us for a day in the park!

You can sign up for this project by going to http://www.volunteeringandservice.org/plan/service-projects.cfm , and clicking the sign up link next for Jenny’s Garden mid-way down the page.