The corporal works of mercy are not a metaphor. These are places in and around Los Angeles that will put you to work this month: a kitchen on Skid Row you can walk into on Saturday morning, shelters, a child who needs the same adult for a year, and the jails.
Central Los Angeles Chinatown, tucked behind Union Station on the far side of the 101. Ten minutes on foot from the Gold Line at Chinatown, and there is a lot on Bruno Street.
Father Greg Boyle's place: the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry programme in the world, run out of a building by the 101 where anyone who has been inside can walk in. The volunteering is real work with real people, and they ask you to stay.
When One to four hours between 9 AM and 3:30 PM on a weekday, at least once a month, for a year. Their fundraising events are mostly single Saturdays.
Before your first day An online intake form. They especially want GED tutors in maths, language arts and computers, licensed therapists, doctors who can remove tattoos, and lawyers for the expungement clinics.
Detention ministry with the Office of Restorative Justice
Office of Restorative Justice · The jails and juvenile halls of the three counties
All three counties Wherever the facility is: the county jails downtown and in Castaic, the juvenile halls, and the jails in Ventura and Santa Barbara. The office that sends you is in Encino.
About 16,200 people are locked up on an average day across Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara. This is the office that walks in to see them: Mass and communion services, one to one visits, preparing people for the sacraments, and small groups on addiction and starting again. It also sits with the families of victims.
Before your first day Every facility has its own clearance, so this one starts with a conversation rather than a form.
Two things worth knowing before you write to anyone.
Anywhere that puts you near children or vulnerable adults will want fingerprints, sometimes a TB test, and a safeguarding class. It is not suspicion of you, it is the price of having been wrong about it before, and every place on this page walks you through it.
Turning up once is worth something. Turning up on the same morning for a year is worth far more, which is why several of these ask for a year before they will match you with anybody.
Most of this work sits in and around downtown, which is where the need is, so the honest answer for the Valley is Catholic Charities and your own parish for now. If you know a place we are missing, especially in the Valley, in Ventura or in Santa Barbara, tell us and we will read their site and add it. Every entry here was read on the organisation’s own website on the day it says, and nothing was taken from a directory. If you run one of these and we have it wrong, or you want to be on this page, tell us.