Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Brian today. We want to end the show today with something hopeful. Yes, most of the news by its nature is bad, and the holidays can be exhausting for our bodies, souls, and certainly our bank accounts. For all the anger and fear, there's also some, dare we say, goodness and cheer, and we want to hear from you about some of the good deeds you are doing or maybe that are being done for you or your neighbors in communities.
We have a coat drive going here at WNYC. There's a toy drive happening in the lobby of our building too. Two women in my neighborhood organized a gift drive for a local shelter for families who've experienced domestic violence, and we're all taking a wishlist. What are the ways, big and small, that you are giving back to others at this time of year? Do you work through an organization or are you working one-on-one? Is this something you're new to trying or is this an annual tradition? Maybe something that you're trying to share with your family.
Give us a call. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. If you can't get through on the phone, you can always text at that number or tweet us @BrianLehrer. We're going to do a little bit of a Feel Good Friday. Gift-giving and supporting local businesses or listener-owned businesses is great and we encourage it, but we also want to talk about the good works of the season. We're joined for this by Sapreet Saluja, Executive Director of New York Cares, the volunteer organization behind the coat drive I mentioned, which they do annually, plus they partner folks looking for hands-on volunteer work with community groups looking for help. Welcome to WNYC, Sapreet.
Sapreet Saluja: Thanks so much, Brigid. It's a joy to be here today.
Brigid Bergin: Let's start by talking about that coat drive. I know that we want to fill in some of the blanks about what happens next, but what are some of the other activities New York Cares is staffing now? Can you give us an idea of the breadth of your volunteer opportunities? I know there's food donations, tutoring, senior services. Tell us about what people can get involved in.
Sapreet Saluja: Well, there's so much to get involved in and as you said, our iconic annual coat drive is front and center for a lot of folks, but in truth, as you mentioned, New York Cares is working 365 days a year around the clock with over 450 community groups and agencies across the five boroughs of New York City to help build thriving communities. You can come to our website at any time, newyorkcares.org, and you can look for the issue area that matters most to you. We are not focused on only one issue area.
We work with youth, we work in education, we work in public spaces, and food insecurity. We work with seniors, we work with animals, all sorts of nonprofits across the city that really need volunteers in order to have the greatest impact. What you can do is take a look and find one that's the right match with you. Like you said, people are looking for things that can really combat the isolation or feeling like you're languishing. You wonder, what can I do? What difference could I make as an individual? I have to tell you, a hell of a lot. There are so many ways for us to be in community together having impact. You choose the cause and you can be the effect.
Brigid Bergin: Do people need experience when they're signing up? Is it one of those things where you need to get training before you volunteer or are there opportunities that people can sign up for and go and do immediately?
Sapreet Saluja: Yes, there are so many opportunities, and as a positive offshoot of the pandemic, all of our training is available virtual. Of course, we want our volunteers to show up with our community partners ready, a bit educated, and sensitive to their surroundings. There's a brief training that we ask you to take at your own pace. It doesn't take long at all, and you can do it at any time that you want virtually. Then you select your project and we have what we call team leaders.
An Uber volunteer, if you would, that's going to hold your hand through the process and help organize you for the first time you volunteer. If you enjoy what you're doing, you can keep coming back to that or you can try something else, but the training is not onerous at all. It's just to get you in the right mindset and have the right awareness as you're stepping into another community to be a part of the solution.
Brigid Bergin: Let's go to John in Queens. John, you're on WNYC.
John: Hey. Yes, my name is John [unintelligible 00:05:10] Excuse me, John. I'm a first responder and veteran and I've been doing some emotion-focused horse-assisted therapy in Connecticut with the [unintelligible 00:05:24] It's good for the horses. A lot of times the horses have experiences from life that they're healing from, and it's good for the humans too. We need each other. Thank you.
Brigid Bergin: John, thanks so much for that call. Let's go to Christie.
Sapreet Saluja: That's so cool.
Brigid Bergin: [laughs] Let's go to Christie and Far Rockaway. Christie, thanks for calling WNYC.
Christie: Hi. How's it going? I'm calling regarding- excuse my dog, -the immigrants at Floyd Bennett airfield that were recently brought here. It's a very isolated area, it's very cold, it's out of the way, and I wanted to do something to help them. I wasn't sure what, so I just cleaned out my closet and brought a bunch of sweaters and clothes there. I went there today.
I didn't see an entrance on how to get in, but there was a group of women in their strollers with their babies and husbands and I just gave them the clothes and they were just very grateful for it. It made me feel good about myself and my closet is a little cleaner too.
Brigid Bergin: Christie, thank you so much for that. Part of what you were doing through New York Cares is certainly collecting coats, but do you have any suggestions for other ways for listeners who are interested, they might want to donate clothes or other items to help people, particularly some of the newly arrived migrants who are coming from places where it's not particularly cold and may not have these kinds of clothes where people could donate those types of goods?
Sapreet Saluja: Yes, it's a great question. We're actually trying to put together a list to help direct folks. There are a number of specific nonprofits doing work like that. I wish I had a place to point people to directly, but we should in the new year have a spot on our website. As you're doing your holiday cleaning out, revert back to us in January and we'll be able to point you in the right direction.
Brigid Bergin: Wonderful. Save those items. I want to read a text that we just got in. A listener writes, "Thank you for doing the show. I run a scrappy nonprofit called Ukraine Mutual Aid. We raise money with rock shows for humanitarian aid to assist just one small Ukrainian village. People have emotionally moved past Ukraine in the last year, it would mean the world to us if you could mention our nonprofit on this show, it's ukrainemutualaid.org."
If listeners want to donate money, that's another way that they can support it. While we're on the topic of donating, I want to just quickly find out the status of your coat drive so far this year. I know you have a goal of collecting 100,000 coats. How's it going? Then how do those coats get to the people who need them?
Sapreet Saluja: Yes, we're in the midst. We have about 15,000 coats into our goal. We track every year how the weather affects people's motivation to start to engage with the coat drive and it got a little colder a little later this year. We're actually expecting the next couple of weeks to be quite big. You go in your closet, you find your coats, you bring them to your office if your office or your building's doing a collection, or you can go on our website and find the public collection drop-off sites, for example, all the fire battalions across the city, major transport hubs, a lot of schools.
Those coats then make their way, courtesy of our logistics partner, UPS, their drivers are going after shifts and collecting the coats from the public sites and bringing them to our warehouse where volunteers come and sort them all. Then we rebundle them based on the specific needs across sizes that have been requested by our community partners and back out they go for distribution. We've already had several distribution events across the city, so if you have donated your coat a few weeks ago, it's already in the hands of somebody who needed it.
Brigid Bergin: That's great.
Sapreet Saluja: If you're donating your coat now, it will be shortly. We have even volunteer opportunities to be in our warehouse helping with all of that sorting and rebundling.
Brigid Bergin: That sounds wonderful. I want to get in one more listener. Marie in the capital district, you have about 30 seconds. Tell us what your good deed this holiday season is.
Marie: Real quick. It ties into your last story. We don't buy Chinese crap. For years now, I've tried to buy American, I try to buy local. My kids, young adults don't really want anything. I bought them a few locally handmade things and the money I did not spend on my kids, I adopted a resident of our local YWCA. She had a Christmas wish list, a winter coat, winter boots, things like that. That's where I spent my money.
Brigid Bergin: Marie, thank you so much. That sounds wonderful. Sapreet, before we let you go, any last tips for listeners who are looking to get into good deed before the holidays?
Sapreet Saluja: I would say just do it. I'm very sure that your time spent, money that you donate, and an action that you take will make the difference in the life of one of our neighbors. Just go for it. There are so many [unintelligible 00:10:46] to get involved in and if you need any inspiration, head to our website, newyorkcares.org, and there may be something great for you to do there or might inspire you to take another action.
Brigid Bergin: I want to thank you so much. I want to thank our listeners for sharing your generosity of spirit and the deeds this morning. Thank you to my guest, Sapreet Saluja, executive director of New York Cares. The Brian Lehrer Show's producers are Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen takes care of the podcast. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. I'm Brigid Bergin, and this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.
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