Options

I started volunteering during the day at City Harvest...doing, brace yourself, technology. Yup, I'm back in the tech world for the next few weeks. But working for a non-profit is SO much more rewarding. The tech life doesn't look so bad from this angle, although I am being cautious :) The mission of City Harvest is to rescue food from restaurants, groceries and deliver it to food pantries and other places of need. It's a good experience to see what it's like in non-profit environment, make connections, and generally see what's out there.

I am helping them with their Access database. I realized that, while I worked/suffered for 5 years, at least I now have some skills and can add real value to an organization. It's hard to believe many people don't know how to do pivot tables in Excel or don't know how to look at their data in Access, which is a relatively user-friendly (if archaic) program. However, I don't blame them - it's not as if I ever learned it in any class. I learned at work. But being comfortable with your data is so important, to be able to converse with it in lots of ways to get the information you need. (Maybe I need to start a company: Data Literacy for Non-Profits?) Anyway, so it's been fun to get my head working again and to be helping out.

In the meantime, I am still thinking about the big question: what next. The answers range from:

- Working at a non-profit, in a desk job basically, or volunteering or interning at one for a short period...could be boring? Is it impactful enough?

- Hands-on volunteering or field work job. Something like Peace Corps, but not as long of a commitment (6 months would be good)

- Starting my own non-profit (or socially conscious for-profit)....the most challenging route

Ex of a cool non-profit: Hot Bread Kitchen - they hire immigrant woman to bake the breads that are native to their homelands and then sell the breads (finding a market for skills)

Ex of a cool for-profit: Tom's Shoes - everyone has probably heard of them now...the guy donates a pair of shoes to poor people for every pair bought.

Intersecting with these options are the fields I could be working in....aka, what kind of help? I've always been interested in food issues: agriculture, healthy, environment effects, etc. Not necessarily separate from food issues, I am also interested in economic development and education and/or types of solutions that last and have a healthy fit into the larger system.

Next move is to start looking into these options further and talk to people who have taken these route. (Anyone have good contacts?)