According to State rankings by volunteer rate put together by the Corporation for National and Community Service, New York State is ranked 49th with only a 19.25% volunteerism rate in New York State. 

Now, time is a precious thing. I get it. But we could do better, and what better way to spend time than to help people with it?  

Everyone has heard that volunteering can be a truly rewarding experience. In some cases, some volunteers gain contacts helpful for their career, while others gain friendships with common interests. At the end of the day, volunteering boosts self-esteem, helps people feel the satisfaction of doing good, and brings together people from all kinds of backgrounds to get a common goal achieved. Here's what one of our volunteers had to say: 

My son, a rising high school junior at Dalton, has been doing food rescue this summer while he has been in the city. He really loves it and the people he has met along the way. A lot of college students have been his team leaders. RLC has really created a way for kids like those college students and my son who have busy school/sports/extracurricular activities to make maximum impact with the odd open hours they have available. I love it! We even rescued together a couple of times. Great mother/son bonding time! 
                                                                                            - Gina

But sometimes the process to start volunteering is made onerous. This is typically because although the intent of volunteerism is noble, the actuality is sometimes more urgent and higher priority things come up and volunteers are flaky. Volunteering comes last, and organizations that rely on volunteers to do their mission need to impose some standards to uphold their level of service. Thus a series of interviews, and a long-drawn out process becomes required for people to even become volunteers in some cases. 

We at Rescuing Leftover Cuisine have strived to strike a balance between making it easy (as easy as three clicks in fact!) to volunteer and ensuring that we are providing a consistent level of food rescue services for our food donors and human services agencies. Our volunteering is also short - just 30 minutes of someone's time to rescue food that would otherwise be in the trash. This allows even the busiest people with the craziest work schedules and life circumstances to be able to find a 30 minute timeslot on our calendar to give back. 

Once you're signed up, it's as easy as walking with a few bags of food: 

Whether you volunteer currently or not, give it a shot!  

I hope to see you out on a food rescue and help get our volunteerism up! 

- Robert Lee