How You Can Help the Homeless Without Spending a Dime

Your local homeless shelters and soup kitchens need volunteers, even for just a few hours at a time. Most of the things that need to be done are simple so any able-bodied person can do them with minimal instruction. Service providers need people not only to deal directly with homeless people but to prepare food, mop, sweep, and do dishes and other such tasks as well.

Food pantries also often need help doing such things as handing out the food but also in organizing donations of food, picking up food from donors, and helping to warehouse donated food in storage areas.

Many homeless people have valuable job skills but have a hard time presenting themselves to employees. While part of this is physical presentation such as cleanliness, grooming and tidy clothing much of it is communication. If you are literate you can help homeless people fill out job applications and create resumes.

Even completely literate and educated homeless people can often use help with their resumes and job applications. Homelessness is very demoralizing and can cause people to undervalue themselves and this reflects in how homeless people fill out such forms and documents.

An outside eye can help them to catch these mistakes and help homeless people to present their best face to prospective employers.

It's almost impossible to be a parent and work or even seek work without childcare. Check with local charities that serve homeless people to see if they need assistance providing childcare for their clients. If not, they can probably help you to find out whom to contact.

With a home base which includes a phone and an Internet connection, it's pretty easy to locate helpful resources in your area. Homeless people generally don't have easy or reliable access to either of these things or if they do they don't necessarily have a quiet place to access them so they can make the best of them.

You can research the charities and government services available for poor and homeless people in your area and compile them into a list to share. Be sure to include addresses and phone numbers plus contact names and email addresses whenever possible. You can then print this information out to give to homeless people seeking help.

Share your knowledge by teaching homeless people to read and write better. It's difficult to gain employment and take advantage of opportunities for betterment when a person can't read and write or can't read and write well.

Local charities that serve the homeless should be able to advise you on where you can donate your teaching services.

If you know someone with the ability to donate time, money, goods or services put them in contact with homeless people or charities that serve the homeless that could use what they have to offer.

For example: Homeless people have little access to professional grooming services which makes looking presentable for job interviews or simply retaining employment difficult. So a few years back (when I could afford to get my hair cut) I gave a list of charities that provide services for homeless people to my hair stylist and suggested to her that it would be greatly appreciated if she could donate some haircuts to homeless people looking for work. She is a totally wonderful person so she found a good match and donates haircuts to homeless people regularly.

People who practice a trade that could be taught, provide skilled services, are able to teach reading and writing, and business owners who may discard still useful merchandise or foodstuffs can all help the homeless.

Contact local adult education services and homelessness outreach programs and volunteer to teach your job skills, job trades and life skills to homeless people. With a skill or trade, even partly trained, a homeless person will get a little advantage over being completely unskilled in the job market.

If no program for knowledge sharing activities exists in your community or if existing programs are too inflexible for your work schedule or other, personal limitations you can independently advertise your services. Simply print up a flier or card offering free resume services, application assistance, etc. and get permission to place them in soup kitchens, shelters, or other service providers for poor and homeless people. I would suggest mentioning to the staff that you'd be pleased if they help people who need your services to contact you.

If you independently provide help to homeless people, please keep your safety in mind. Meet only in public places where other people are around and do not share your personal information.

Whenever you purge your closet of clothes you no longer wear and get rid of toys and clothes that your kids have grown out of, donate them to charities that help the homeless. Hats, gloves, coats and other winter clothes are always appreciated.

Books and current newspapers are also appreciated. Anything portable that a homed person would enjoy, a homeless person would.

Be sure to donate your old computer to a homeless shelter or local homelessness service provider when you buy a new one.

Every Sunday you can match up ads to flier coupons and coupons you have saved and find products that would be free if you combine a good coupon with a store sale. Often these things may not be something you'd use so you pass them by. But from now on, don't. Just pick up the free item while you are shopping.

Get the things that turn out to be free after discount and coupon and donate them to homeless charities. Food pantries and homeless shelters usually gladly accept non-food donations. Hygiene products are especially welcome. Things like that deodorant, tampon, or toothpaste that's not your brand will be greatly appreciated by someone else.

You can, free of charge, JOIN SQUIDOO and create lenses and set them to donate to one of the homelessness related charities.

Your lenses don't need to have anything at all to do with homelessness, you can write about whatever you please, share photos of pets or children - do what you like - and any earnings from views that your lenses make will be funneled to the charity of your choice.

A few people have asked me "if homelessness has affected you so deeply, why don't you donate your lens earnings to charities that fight homelessness?"

I would love to donate the proceeds of this lens and all of my others to help homeless people. Unfortunately, due to illness and disability, I'm on the very edge of homelessness myself.

You can read about why I'm in financial difficulty here.
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