Ask HN: What's your cause?

[cgulovsen]

I really want to commit myself to volunteering at least a day or two a month to a non profit organization. My problem is that I'm not quite sure I know where I want to volunteer. I'm looking for a cause that I'm passionate about so I've come to HN to ask what are you passionate about? Where do you volunteer? Thanks everyone

[invinceable]

Start with the bigger picture and decide what is a big problem you see and want to be a part of the solution. Once you know that, you can look at the different things you can do to help eradicate that problem.

For me it was helping the homeless. There are many ways to help homeless people, but I think the best way is showing them that someone still cares just if even to only help serve a meal. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has many things here you can do. I suggest serving meals where you get a chance to interact with them. The meal is great way to help at a basic level but where you can do these people the most good is to just smile and ask how their day is going... Show them kindness. Give them hope.

That is the way I feel I can best help the homeless at this moment.

[mindcrime]

I'm not actively involved in anything in a volunteer capacity at the moment, but for pretty much the entire decade of the 90's I was a volunteer firefighter.

Now, firefighting is too big a time sink for me, especially in terms of being as active as I was back then. But if I could free up some time to do something volunteer related, my first choice would be to volunteer as a tutor for the local Literacy Council.

I've also toyed with trying to squeeze in some time to teach some free programming classes at the local hackerspace, including maybe a kid centric thing using Scratch or something of that ilk. But right now I work a full-time job AND am working on a startup, so I've kinda put that stuff on the backburner for a while.