Volunteer Suggestions for Austin, TX

The holiday season is coming around and with so much goodwill in the air many people feel the need to help those less fortunate by volunteering in their community. If your community happens to be Austin or the Austin area I have a list of opportunities for you.

1) Meals-on-Wheels
This organization bring hot meals to the elderly home-bound. The best part of this is that you get to interact with incredibly kind people who don't get a lot of chances to see and talk with people. It's very nice knowing you've brightened someone's day. It also has several shoot-offs that you can volunteer with. They also have a portable kiosk that delivers meals on the street to homeless people.

2) Keep Austin Beautiful
If you're not so good with people but love nature, this is a great place for you to volunteer. They work very hard to keep Austin clean and they also work very hard to make sure that there is legislation in place that protects the environment from guck spewing factories. Another part of their work is promoting usage of public transportation to decrease vehicle emissions.

3) Community Partnership for the Homeless
This is pretty much what it sounds like. They do all they can to help the homeless. This includes providing food, shelter, mental counseling, helping them gain job skills, and everything inbetween. Most of these people are everyday normal people who are having a run of really bad luck and just need help getting back up on their feet.

4) Any Baby Can
This organization helps parents of children with disabilities. They provide educational classes for the parents to help them address their child's special needs. They also train volunteers to care for the children so that the parents can have time to run errands and even give the husband and wife a night off once in a while. They also have another branch of the program called the Ceden Family Resource Center that provides parenting classes for at-risk parents and basic educational tutoring for people of all ages, young, old and inbetween. They need people to do this tutoring and everybody is qualified.