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.
Circle V Ranch Camp · Los Padres National Forest, near Santa Ynez
Ventura and Santa Barbara Up Highway 154 in the Los Padres, past the San Marcos Pass, about two hours and a half from downtown Los Angeles and twelve miles from Solvang. Nobody drops in: this is a place you go for a week or a weekend.
A camp in the mountains above the Santa Ynez Valley, started by St. Vincent de Paul in 1945, where almost every child comes on a campership from Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara or Orange county. Summer counsellor is a paid job rather than a volunteer one, because of the screening children are owed.
When Summer, for staff. The volunteer work is the camp office, the work and clean up weekends, and the bus stops on the day the children travel.
Before your first day Staff apply for the summer. Volunteers ask about the office, the work weekends or the bus stops.
Central Los Angeles Boyle Heights, on North Mission Road, with the church and the men's shelter a few streets away on Gless. Twelve minutes from downtown, and the Gold Line runs to Pico Aliso and Mariachi Plaza.
Started in 1986 by people of Dolores Mission parish and the Jesuits. The Guadalupe Homeless Project still sleeps men in the church itself, and the women's shelter is the only one in Los Angeles for women over 55. There is also after school work and youth organising in the neighbourhood.
Central Los Angeles The office is in Pico Union near downtown, but you and the young person meet wherever you both live, so this one works from anywhere in the county.
One child, one adult, for a year at least. They match young people with mentors of every belief and background, and the whole thing rests on the adult turning up for long enough to be believed.
When Four to eight hours a month, meeting at least twice a month, for a minimum of a year.
Before your first day An interview, a background check, and a training session, which they run twice a month.
San Gabriel Valley Duarte, at the foot of the San Gabriels off the 210, between Pasadena and Azusa. The Gold Line stops at Duarte and City of Hope, fifteen minutes' walk away.
The Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles keep an assisted living community here, with a chapel and daily Mass. What they ask of volunteers is mostly company: visiting residents, running an activity or a party, driving somebody to Sunday Mass, helping in the chapel.
Before your first day An online application through their volunteer page.
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.