Done in a Day

50. Start a Book Club or Movie Night
    Gather a group together and discuss a book or movie that is themed around peace.

51. Organize a Trash Pick-Up in Your Community
    Pick up trash in your neighborhood, school, community center, and/or church to take care of and beautify the area.

52. Beautify Your School
    Help refurbish your local schools. Plant flowers and trees, paint benches or murals and small repairs.

53. Refresh Community Spaces and Encourage Public Transit
    Clean up bus stops and subway stations, and then distribute transportation schedules at your school and in your neighborhood to promote use of public transportation and carpooling.

54. Support Your Parks
    Volunteer at local, state, and national parks and forests and work on recreation projects, build shelters and camps, repair trails, and create play areas for children. Learn more

55. Start a Book Club or Movie Night
    Gather a group together and discuss a book or movie that is themed around peace, the legacy of civil rights or the life of MLK Jr.

56. Promote Health and Exercise
    Educate your community on the benefits of walking. Start a community bike program and reach out to your community cycle center and see if you can work with them to create a 'fix a bike day' or youth biking or walking marathon. Learn more

57. Honor through Art
    Work with local neighbors and decorate paper bags or posters with pictures, dreams and quotes.

58. Collect In-Kind Donations for Shelters
    Organize your neighborhood and collect toys, clothes and canned goods to give to homeless or women’s shelters.

59. Offer Family Portraits at a Local Shelter
    Work with shelter residents or senior living communities and organize a photo session for individuals, families or friends. Make sure to respect privacy rights and ask for permission.

60. Create a Day of Beauty
    Organize a “day of beauty” for those in need with experienced professionals. Work with your local salons to promote free haircuts and manicures at a local women’s shelter. Make sure to respect privacy rights and ask for permission.

61. Offer Computer Training
    Assist with computer classes for the unemployed at the local job coaching or self-sufficiency center.

62. Provide Child Care for a Shelter
    Contact your local shelter and offer to provide child care for shelter residents. Play games, create crafts, or read to the children. Make sure to respect privacy rights and ask for permission.

63. Revitalize Local Shelters
    Make colorful decorations for a shelters or senior living communities. Create signs, ornaments, pictures, flowers, etc. In finding ways to access materials for the decoration projects, remember to see what you have at home. Yarn, buttons, magazine photos, etc. can all be used for creative and colorful decoration materials. Or check to see if your community has an art material recycle center for art materials. http://www.scrap-sf.org/

64. Tutor Children
    Contact your local shelter and offer to tutor the resident children in reading, writing and math. Make sure to respect privacy rights and ask for permission.

65. Advocate for the Homeless
    Write letters to the editor of your local paper advocating for the needs of the homeless. Research statistics on hunger and homelessness in your community and raise awareness.

66. Start a Winter Coat Drive
    Hold a coat drive in your community by partnering with schools and local businesses. Ask for gently used coats to donate to those in need. http://www.coats-for-kids.org/

67. Organize a Baby Supply Drive
    Contact your local hospital to get more information on their program for new mothers. Collect baby basics such as formula, diapers, and layette items and deliver to a local hospital for new mothers in need.

68. Demonstrate Your Mending and Sewing Skills
    Contact your local shelter or senior community and offer to alter and repair clothes for the needy, elderly or homeless.

69. Become a Star for a Day
    Perform music, drama, and/or dance at local hospitals, shelters, community centers, senior homes.

70. Showcase Your Drama Skills
    Write and perform a play. You may event want to invite the children in your community to join.

71. Create a Festival of Cultural Diversity
    Create a cultural diversity festival illustrating all the cultures represented in your community.

72. Host a Blood Drive
    Gather a group of friends, family, and colleagues to donate blood to the local Red Cross. Or you can facilitate a bone marrow drive at a local hospital. www.givelife.org

73. Support Our Troops
    Set up a table in a local mall or shopping center and invite families in faith communities to make cards and care packages for overseas military personnel. www.LetsSayThanks.com

74. Teach Art in an Underprivileged School
    Art projects encourage creativity, but they are often the first thing to be cut in under resourced schools. Seek out donations of materials from family, friends, and sponsors. Utilize unique or creative and easily accessible items for projects such as yarn, buttons and magazine photos.

75. Teach Students about Science
    Provide hands-on science activities in an elementary classroom. Think about interesting science experiments from your school days or do some research on the web. Learn more

76. Coordinate Special Events at Schools
    Help a school put together a special event, such as a career day, parent night or cultural fair. Get the parents, students, and teachers involved.

77. Assemble Literature for Schools
    Put together packets of study skills literature or other aids to help kids succeed in their classes. Make these available at local schools.

78. Advocate for the Homeless through Art
    Design posters that raise awareness of the issues of homelessness and poverty. Contact local businesses to ask permission to post artwork in strategic locations such as your local supermarket.
    Learn more

79. Bilingual? Share Your Talent
    Become a translator for local nonprofits in need of this service for client relations or material development. Visit 1-800-Volunteer and sign up to share your language skills. www.1800Volunteer.org

80. Volunteer at a Local Tax Preparation Office
    Want to be a part of lifting over five million individuals, 2.6 million of which are children, out of poverty this year? Become a volunteer tax preparer, a greeter, a child care provider, an outreach coordinator or a translator for your local VITA site, or tax coalition providers and make free tax preparation available to more individuals in or at the poverty level. Learn more