Thanksgiving-Time Volunteer Opportunities with Children (Cambridge/Somerville)
Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services (SCES) organizes volunteers to deliver meals on Thanksgiving morning. You use your own car and go in your own team or get paired up with one other person. I think these are the meals-on-wheels routes/recipients, but this is for the Thanksgiving meal. Mohan, Hitesh and I did this last year (and will again this year). We were done by 1 – 1:30 (about 3 hours of delivering about 20 meals to elders in Somerville). For this opportunity, you need to have a criminal check (CORI). You can contact Marie Mazzeo at Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services if you’re interested: 617-628-2601 x3051 or mwilson@eldercare.org
In the past, we have also delivered food (not on Thanksgiving day, but a few days before) with the Salvation Army in Central Square, Cambridge (my car, with Mohan, and a volunteer from the Salvation Army). In this case, we were delivering a box of food (frozen turkey, etc.) also in Somerville. The volunteer was very nice. There was a short talk about church up front but then we moved on to other topics. I didn’t have to have a CORI check for this opportunity. Salvation Army (Cambridge) phone is: (617) 547-3400
In addition, The Little Sister of the Poor (Highland Ave in Somerville – Spring Hill) welcomes donations of pies on Thanksgiving. This is a center for low-income elders. Very nice folks. They particularly enjoy pecans! 617.776.4420
Please note that SCES (Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services) has a number of excellent volunteer programs. I work as a Money Management volunteer (great for your finance committee types, and they’re always need more volunteers). Happy to talk with anyone about this too.
I am also a fan of the food pantry at the Unitarian Universalist Church near Medford Square (on High Street). More information and drop-off donation times here: http://www.uumedford.org/pantry.html.
