The Homeless and Hungry

Bowery Mission
212-684-2800
Offers its 62 beds to homeless men who are recovering drug and alcohol addicts. The organization offers meals, showers, clothing, and career counseling.

City Harvest
917-351-8700
Collects 16 million pounds of unused food every year from restaurants, corporations, and Greenmarkets, and gets it to those who need it, from single-parent families and senior citizens to soup kitchens and food-relief centers. Money goes toward truck maintenance and delivery costs. Read more.

Citymeals-on-Wheels
212-687-1234
Volunteering at a soup kitchen over the holidays is a tradition in many families, but if you can't make it yourself, you can still help out. Give to City Meals on Wheels, a group with a network of 120 centers around the city serving mostly low-income, homebound people. Every bit of money you give them will be put toward meal preparation (they do not take food donations) and delivery. Read more.

Taste of victory : Doe Fund participants prepared this cake for the 2001 graduates of Ready, Willing & Able.
Doe Fund
Employs and supports homeless individuals in their efforts to become self-sufficient, contributing members of society. Among the initiatives: The Ready, Willing & Able program provides work experience and support services; A Better Place is The Doe Fund's supportive permanent residence for homeless men and women living with AIDS.

The Food Bank for New York City
The site notes that this is the nation's largest food bank and largest distributor of free fresh produce, providing over 51 million pounds of food annually to more than 1,200 community food programs.

Habitat for Humanity
Jimmy Carter's Christian housing project builds for low-income families in Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.

Hamilton Madison House
Serving the Chinatown area, the organization tries to reach both the Asian and non-Asian community in its neighborhood with Head Start, adult education and other programs.

The HOPE Program
This downtown-Brooklyn organization runs a job-readiness program to help homeless people become economically self-sufficient.

The Legal Aid Society
The society provides legal assistance to indigent city residents in a variety of case types.

Partnership for the Homeless
212-645-3444
To help provide shelter, consider giving to the Partnership for the Homeless, a volunteer-run group that joins forces with churches, synagogues, and mosques around the city, maintaining 100 small overnight emergency shelters.

Services for the Underserved
Working mostly in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, SUS offers help including home care for Medicaid patients and rehabilitative services for adults with developmental disabilities and mental retardation.