A few people commented on my delivering food yesterday at the hottest part of the day. The temperature hit 101F (38.3C) while I was pulling around 80 pounds of food in a cart, according to my phone’s app .

People often also flap their gums about not having time to volunteer. I never hear them say they don’t have time for social media or other screen time, yet Americans average over 5 hours of screen time per day. I rarely spend that much time volunteering per week. And, depending on the volunteering task, I count some as cardio work. Plus my food delivery volunteering leads to free food. I help neighbors. I reduce waste.

Volunteering as an auxiliary police officer helps make my neighborhood and city safer.

People fly around the world to experience different cultures, spending thousands of dollars, spending weeks away, on top of the hours to earn the money. Volunteering leads me to meet people as culturally different from mainstream, and I just walk there. As an auxiliary I meet with cops, who are different from NYU, Columbia, Greenwich Village, or most Manhattan residents. Many in those groups will say things like “all cops are bastards.” They’ll call cops racist, yet I’m the only white male who finished from my training class and serves. I’m almost the only white male auxiliary in precinct.

Delivering food I meet homeless people, church officials, crazy people, retail food managers, and more.

Yet I don’t fly, spend thousands of dollars, or spend weeks getting to these places. Most of all, I don’t need to escape where I am. I experience more diversity and save more time and money.

Plus every few years I find a new way to volunteer. I’ve served in soup kitchens, tutored kids, cleaned rivers, done sponsored sports activities, promoted political activities, protested injustices like Apartheid, planned events, planted plants, and countless other things.

The past few years, delivering overstock food that would have been thrown away is my biggest. I didn’t realize I’d posted as many posts as I had, but here’s a list. I don’t know if I should count picking up litter or other sidchas that benefit my community but I just do in the course of life.

Most of all, volunteering gives me energy, creates time on my calendar (despite what people who don’t volunteer try to believe), saves money, and most of all builds community and alleviates suffering.

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Volunteering posts

• Volunteering: I just helped deliver a mammoth summer load of vegetables to the community fridge
• 781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community Project, four years in the making
• Volunteering warmed my heart on a cold spring day
• 811: Tina Tombstone: A friend I volunteer delivering food to the needy with
• Volunteering recognition from 1993
• More pictures from volunteering, delivering farm fresh vegetables.
• Pictures of recent volunteer deliveries
• Video of me volunteering, delivering the food they were going to throw out to a community center
• Apparently I’ve Earned a Reputation Volunteering
• My volunteering amounts to donating about $50,000 per year of food.
• Volunteering: Institutional Composting
• On delivering food to a soup kitchen on Christmas
• Serving in Uniform Podcasts and Pictures
• 784: Serving in Uniform on September 11, 2024
• “There’s no food here, just vegetables.”
• Kevin Fucillo
• More of: I eat food homeless people throw away
• Petty Authority
• Selected New Experiences, September 3, 2023
• One month without even my “cheat” of plugging in at work. Then both batteries died.
• My sidchas, standard operating procedures, and preferences

• ← Why I love the heat, even when it’s 95F (35C) on the way to 102F (39C).
• Can you love your neighbor as yourself in challenging times? →