Yesterday, 185 volunteers plus150 students and families volunteered at public schools in Harlem, Bushwich and Boerum Hill, Brooklyn in honor of MLK Day.

Volunteers in Bushwick included a group of high school students associated with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) from Brooklyn International High School. The students, recent refugees to the United States,  presented inspirational stories and volunteered alongside adults and elementary school students.

Since many people couldn’t donate coats in late December due the blizzard, we’ve extended coat collections at several locations.  If you have a coat to give, please visit:

• * New York Penn Station, LIRR and Amtrak concourses: Weekdays 7:30-9:30am
• * Port Authority Bus Terminal: Weekdays 7:30-9:30am
• * New York Cares Coat Drive Warehouse, 250 Hudson Street: Weekdays 9:30am-5:00pm
• * Manhattan Mini Storage locations

It’s not too late – help us collect as many coats as possible for New Yorkers who need them during this cold and snowy winter.

By Gary Bagley, Executive Director, New York Cares

This month marked the first observance of September 11 as a national day of service and remembrance.

New York Cares is committed to making volunteering part of every New Yorker’s life, and I was glad to see the day dedicated to rekindling the spirit of community service that helped rebuild New York City after 9/11.

This year, New York Cares ran special volunteer projects with MyGoodDeed at PS76M in Harlem. 150 volunteers spent the day working with 3rd and 4th graders on service-themed literacy projects, painting murals, and prepping the school for the new school year.

Three of our Team Leaders were honored to read names of 9/11 victims alongside family members at the memorial service at Ground Zero.  I was gratified to see so many of our volunteers making a difference.

We welcomed many new volunteers on 9/11; I hope they’ll come back and consider participating year round. Whatever time they have to give, New York Cares can help them use it productively and for the good of all New Yorkers. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the 40 volunteers who joined us at 6am in Central Park last Friday to cheer for New York Cares on Good Morning America (GMA) during the Kenny Chesney concert!

It’s been a busy summer for the students who participated in our six-week  Youth Service Summer Program. Here are a few highlights:

Meal Service
Students from the FDNY Explorers Program in Brooklyn teamed up with Momentum AIDS Project to pack pantry bags and serve meals to the homeless and low-income families at Holy Trinity Church.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York Cares won the top award for Overall Excellence in Management at the 2009 New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Awards!

We’re incredibly gratified to earn this prestigious award, and are proud to be in the company of the other finalist nonprofits honored yesterday. Read more in the NY Sun and New York Nonprofit Press.

Thanks to our volunteers, donors, Board, staff, and agencies we work with – your support and hard work make New York Cares what it is, and we share this award with you!

Executive Director Gary Bagley (center) and Board President Gail Harris (right) on stage with Jack Rosenthal of the New York Times Foundation

We’re just back from taping a segment with Maria Bartiromo for the Wall Street Journal Report.  The story highlights the rise in unemployed people who are volunteering.

See it on WNBC4 on Sunday, May 24th at 11:30am (following Meet The Press) and on CNBC at 7:30pm.

Thanks to volunteers David Halloran, Hema Kailasam, and Gina Agiostratidou for contributing to the piece, and to everyone at PS 124 for allowing us to document our project with them on camera.

David Halloran and Gary Bagley.

Spring brings New York Cares gardening projects. Last weekend, 18 volunteers went to Added Value farms, a 2.75 acre urban farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that engages local youth to take part in planting, harvesting, and selling the crops they produce.

Weeds completely covered the field, but New York Cares volunteers worked alongside teenagers from the surrounding community to pull every last one, clearing 6,000 square feet in less than three hours. Once we reached that goal, we continued on to weed the entire east side of the farm, way more than the farm had originally planned to do. At the end of the day, we kicked back with some homemade hibiscus tea and surveyed a job well done.

Ready to get your hands in the dirt? Find your gardening project.

Through its Bullseye Gives campaign, Target will donate $3 million to ten charities based on your votes. Our parent organization, Hands On Network, is competing and currently has 4% of the vote.

New York Cares will share HandsOn Network’s winnings, so we need as many New Yorkers as possible to vote and help us raise money. Help us reach 10% of the vote by May 25 by voting daily.

The more you vote, the more we win!

This past school year, 900 high school students from under-served communities in New York City were hard at work studying for the SAT with the help of devoted New York Cares volunteers.

Thanks to the 271 volunteers who helped them improve their test scores and build self-confidence, these students are now well on their way to making their dreams of college a reality.

We held a special celebration this week at Metro 53 to thank our volunteers and partner agencies  for their hard work throughout the year.