View our "God's Call to Service" brochure in PDF format.
Wow! What a great time of serving God together! You've seen and experienced many new things. Your life has touched others and you have been touched by the lives of those you've encountered...but, now what?
Will you allow this encounter with the city to change you? Will it cause you to treat others differently at home? Have you thought about ways that you can continue to serve when you get home? Or will you simply put this experience into your "box of memories" and let it remain there as something that has been fun to do?
Here are opportunities to serve away from home:
Mennonite Options
Mennonite Mission Network's Christian Service department coordinates numerous service opportunities in addition to their partnership with DOOR:
- Mennonite Voluntary Service - Spend a year or two living in community and volunteering in a community agency.
- Service Adventure - 18-21 year olds spend 10 months living in community, serving and learning about the world.
- Radical Journey - After 6 weeks training and group building in Chicago, spend 10 months serving in an international location with a team of other young adults.
- Service Opportunities for Older People (SOOP) - Volunteers 30-105 years old spend a few weeks to a few months in service.
- Youth Venture - spend a few weeks in the summer serving abroad or domestically with a team of individuals from various places.
Presbyterian Options
- Young Adult Volunteers - Serve for one year in communities of need in 18 sites in the United States or overseas through the Presbyterian Church USA. (Partner program with DOOR).
Other Denominational & Non-Denominational Options
- Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
- United Methodist Committee on Relief UMCOR
- United Church of Christ Servant Partners
- Mission Year - Serve for a year in an inner city, increasing your love of God and people.
Here are opportunities to serve in your Home Community:
Community
- Be a peer mediator
- Become certified in first-aid
- Befriend a kid in your community
- Befriend a senior citizen
- Check into summer and post-high school short-term mission and service programs
- Clean house for someone who is housebound
- Collect baby items for a pregnancy center
- Collect food for a local food pantry
- Collect recycling
- Donate your old cell phone to an organization collecting old cell phones
- Donate your old computer to an organization collecting old computers
- Make friends with someone from another culture
- Make lots of sandwiches and hand them out to people who are hungry
- Mentor a child
- Organize a community day or evening with games for kids and free food
- Participate in a hunger walk or related walk/run
- Read for an organization that makes audio literature for people who can’t see well
- Read to someone who has difficulty reading
- Train a seeing-eye dog
- Tutor a child
- Tutor a newly arrived immigrant who doesn’t speak English well
- Visit someone who is housebound
- Volunteer at a domestic violence shelter (you may have to go through training)
- Volunteer at a rape crisis center (you may have to go through training)
- Volunteer at the food pantry
- Volunteer at the hospital
Church
- Collect care packages for missionaries from your church
- Commit to writing and encouraging a mission worker
- Give or raise money for missions
- Invite friends to your church or youth group activities
- Make care packages for college students from your church
- Set aside daily devotional time
Beyond Home
- Be a summer camp counselor a children’s camp
- Collect health or school kits for people in underdeveloped countries (find an organization that collects them to know what to put in them and where to send them.)
- Collect socks, underwear, coats and blankets for the homeless in a local city
- Write letters for a human rights organization
- Write letters to a prisoner
- Keep up to date on national and international news— read the newspaper
- Learn a foreign language
- Learn about social issues, and contact local government officials about your concerns
At Home
- Baby-sit for free
- Bake cookies for your pastor
- Do your chores without being asked
- Mow lawns for free
- Pet-sit
- Pick up trash beside the road
- Rake leaves for your neighbor
- Read about places where you might like to serve someday
- Ride your bike to school instead of having your mom drive you (if it’s not too far)
- Shovel snow
- Sort through your closet—give away clothes that you haven’t worn this season; give away one that is your favorite
- Volunteer to walk a dog
- Wash cars for free
- Wash dishes for your family without being asked
- Wash windows
- Weed flower beds