A few things you can do to make a difference that won’t cost you a cent.
Not everyone has the means to make cash donations to their favorite charities, or even a few spare coins to drop into a panhandler’s cup. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to help.
Whether you’re unable to give money, or you just prefer not to, there are still a couple of key ways you can make a big difference.
#1 Give Your Time
If you can’t give your money, maybe you can give some time. Volunteering is a great way to give back when you have more spare time than spare money.
There are plenty of organizations serving the homeless population. And they would love you to volunteer for an hour, a day, a week – whatever time you’re willing to give. Look for a soup kitchen, food bank, shelter or other organization with a volunteer slot fitting your desired time commitment.
Keep this in mind: many places are swamped with volunteers during the holidays. This is when a lot of us are thinking about giving back to our communities and goodwill toward men. Volunteering during any other time of the year most likely means your man hours will go a lot farther.
Once you choose an organization, talk to the program volunteer coordinator. They will be able to tell you when they most need volunteers and get you on their schedule.
#2 Give Your Skills
There are a lot of volunteer positions available that don’t require many special skills. Chopping vegetables, serving meals, cleaning facilities and performing minor repairs are some jobs that always seem to need doing. But there are other tasks that could help – ones that are overlooked during the hustle and bustle of daily operations.
If you have a special skill that could benefit an organization helping the homeless, consider offering it as a donation.
For example, a web designer could offer services to the local soup kitchen’s whose website needs updating.
If you love to knit, make gloves, hats, or even blankets to hand out during cold weather? You’ll help someone out and as a bonus, these projects are great for stash busting.
If you’re an awesome gardener, donate some of your harvest to a local soup kitchen. They can turn your produce into fresh, delicious, and nutritious meals for those who need them. You’ll be giving someone a healthy meal and saving yourself from eating zucchini every day for a week.
If you’re a salesperson that can always get a “yes” for a good cause, reach out to local businesses about donating their surplus food stock to the food bank.
Everyone has special skills, and I’m betting one of yours could come in handy at a local charitable organization. It’s just a matter of finding a creative way to use it!
In fact, maybe your special skill is thinking up creative ways to use other people’s skills to help people who are homeless- and then getting the word out that those skills are needed.
#3 Give Your Things
Now, I’m not suggesting you go out and buy new things to donate. I’m not even suggesting you buy new things to replace the stuff you donated. After all, that wouldn’t be free.
But, if you have things you no longer need or use that are in good condition, donate them. Donate household goods and items to a local thrift store that uses profits to fund programs that help homeless people.
If they’re items that might be useful to homeless people, like a winter coat that your child outgrew in a year, you can give them directly for maximum impact.
Please be sure that whatever you donate is clean, undamaged, and generally in good repair. If you no longer want it because it doesn’t work or is in bad shape, it’s not appropriate for donation.
#4 Give Your Empathy
Keep in mind, empathy is not the same as pity. I’ve talked about this before in my article on the importance of eye contact, but it can’t be overstated. People who are homeless are often misunderstood, maligned, or simply ignored. When people do stop to interact with them, too often it’s just to talk down to them, insult them, or tell them to “get a job.”
The simple, easy human interactions many of us take for granted in everyday life are one of the first things to disappear once people start reading you as “homeless.”
Having a little empathy and treating a homeless person as just that, a person, can go a long way toward making them feel seen.
If you have trouble relating to someone who’s homeless, cultivating empathy can go a long way. Remember there are things that could happen in anyone’s life that would result in them becoming homeless. And that doesn’t mean that they lose their humanity along with their home.
On some level, we all know having more money or resources than someone else doesn’t make us better than them. But we can still catch ourselves acting like it does. Question that impulse.
It’s sneaky. It may bubble up in different ways, telling you things like, “it’s not the fact that they’re homeless that makes me want to avoid them, it’s only because they’re…” fill in the blank. Talking to themselves? Sitting on the ground? Not smiling? Smiling too much? Menacing?
Question whether your knee-jerk aversion response is due to a credible threat to your safety. Or, is it just the result of internalized prejudice? It’s hard to live in a world that disdains and distrusts homeless people without absorbing some of those feelings yourself. The important part is to question and counteract those entrenched biases whenever you find them.
