Orientation at West 29th @ 7th Ave, New York, NY

Image taken from NYCares.org

Few months ago, a friend of mine (Haidhar) told me about New York Cares, a non-profit volunteer organization with a headquarter in the city. Founded in the late 1980s, this organization was created in order to take action against serious social issues and to address the problems from the ground up. As of now, they have connection with approximately 1200 nonprofits, city agencies and public schools. 

New York Cares serve as a medium connecting individual/groups who wanted to do volunteering work with existing organizations /associations that are in need of volunteer. From my observation, the method applies by the organization is unique and novel because unlike other NGO that work with a specific groups, New York Cares doesn't restrict itself to only certain groups but have connection with various different group and organization. By having connection with different groups, they can offer variety of projects with different focus group namely:

Adult Education, Job Readiness, Adult and Children With Special Needs, Animal Care, Children's Education, Children's Recreation, Disaster Response, Environment, Health and Wellness, Holiday Needs, Hunger, Park Revitalization, and Seniors. 

To be recognized as official members of New York Cares, new volunteers need to attend an orientation session where they will be introduced to New York Cares' year-round volunteer opportunities. So I registered for the orientation on December 15th 2010, and had finally become official members of New York Cares. 

It's been my passions to help others because I believe that the life that I am granted with is not mine alone. Everything that I have is all privileged given by god and I believe that it is my duty to reach and help out as much as I can. Being told about this organization was like guidance from god as he shows me the path in doing the right things in life and without second guessing, I decided to join this organization right away.

At this very moment, it's been about six month since I first joined this organization and I've involved in quite a number of projects in which most of them are unique in its own way. I've met a lot of lovely people, experiencing new things during each project, and have been travelling to different borough and district. I must say that every project that I did had somehow made me re-evaluate my perspective of life and made me realize how much blessing had I been granted w/. As I'm writing this right now, I'm sure that I could be of some help to someone somewhere around the world. I may not be able to help them all but I'll try my best to help within my power and capabilities. The least I can do is providing some insights to what I did and hopefully this will be something that can be beneficial for me and others Insha’Allah :)