[kitsune_]

This isn't about general voluntary work. Never.

This is about you helping strangers, or friends of friends. Moving, cooking dinner, helping with a legal problem, helping them with their exams, letting them borrow your rice cooker over the weekend, helping them with their birthday party, inviting them for a drink, volunteering to look after their dog and so on.

[dnautics]

I think that's tricky. If you help people too much, then they resent you because of the built up debt (which is why I wrote the part about debt in there). It's counterintuitive, but I think asking for help is a better strategy for making friends than offering help.