What we do
The kind of acts.
Nothing complicated, nothing that needs a skill. This is the list, and it grows every time someone sends us a better idea.
Some of these work as a group on a Saturday morning. Some only work one person at a time. Both are on the list, and it says which is which.
Together · a couple of hours
Things a few of us do at once.
Clean up an alley
Two hours, gloves and grabbers, a named block, bags counted at the end. Keep Pinellas Beautiful holds the site permissions and lends supplies, so nobody needs a permit and nobody has to work out where the bags go.
No experience · 15 maxPlant something
Native and pollinator plantings, tree plantings, mulching, a morning at the youth farm. Always through a programme that already has permission — a verge or an alley is city right-of-way and you can't just plant in it.
All ages welcomeA shift at a food bank
Sorting, packing meal kits, stocking a pantry. Feeding Pinellas needs no orientation at all — you register and turn up. Groups cap at ten to twenty-five depending on the job.
16+ · book aheadServe a meal
A free sit-down restaurant where volunteers host and serve guests. This is the closest thing to buying a meal for a stranger that actually reaches someone who needs it — and you sit and talk to them while they eat.
16+ · caps at 10Restock the little free pantries
Everyone brings ten or fifteen dollars of sealed groceries from an agreed list. We fill the three city pantries, tidy them, and note what had already gone.
Bring $10–15Sixty cards
An indoor morning making birthday cards for people in senior housing who don't get post. All materials provided. Air-conditioned, which matters here from May to October.
No experience · indoorsA morning at a shelter
Serving, sorting donations, painting, landscaping — whatever they say they need that week. Most shelters ask for paperwork per person in advance, so these take three to five weeks to arrange.
Paperwork ahead of timeAn hour with the animals
Dog walking, laundry, socialising cats at a county or private shelter. Group sizes and ages vary a lot between shelters, so we say which on the event.
Usually 16+On your own · any day
Things you do one at a time.
These don't work as a group — a stranger being handed something by eight people at once is not a kind moment, it's an ambush. But they're half of what this is about, so here they are. Do them whenever, tell us if you like, or don't.
Buy someone flowers
A neighbour who's had a bad year. The woman who's run the counter for a decade. Someone who's just come out of hospital. Leave them at the door if handing them over would make it about you.
A card with cash in it
The most useful thing you can give somebody is money, and the kindest way to give it is where they don't have to say thank you. Under a door. In a locker. With someone who'll pass it on and won't say who from.
Buy someone a meal
Quietly, at the till, before they get there — not announced in a queue. If you want to be certain it lands where it's needed, put the same money into a meal programme instead and come serve it with us.
Just company
The neighbour nobody visits. The relative you keep meaning to call. Thirty minutes of listening without steering. This costs nothing and it is the thing most people actually need.
Two rules for the solo ones.
Don't film it, and don't tell the person it's part of anything. A gift with an audience is a transaction.
Sealed, shop-bought food only if food is involved. Homemade food handed to strangers creates real problems for everybody.
The long way round
Visiting someone who's ill or on their own.
This is the one people ask for most and the one we can't do on a Saturday morning. It's worth explaining properly rather than pretending otherwise.
Hospitals and hospices screen visitors hard, and they're right to. A local hospital wants an application, an interview, a background check, a TB test, immunisation records and a weekly shift held for six months. One states flatly that a regular schedule is necessary and it does not take one-time volunteers. Hospice is lighter but still asks for a four-hour orientation plus twelve hours of patient and family training before you meet anybody.
So there are two honest routes, and we'll help with either:
- Start the hospice trainingSixteen hours, and then you can sit with people properly, for as long as you want to. Email us and we'll point you at the right programme and check in on how it's going.
- Come serve a meal in the meantimeAt the sit-down café the job is hosting — you sit with people and talk to them over lunch. Two weeks' notice instead of six months, and it's the same impulse.
And a third thing that isn't a programme at all: there is almost certainly someone within a few streets of you who hasn't had a proper conversation this week. You don't need anyone's permission for that one.
Something missing?
This list came from people turning up and saying "we should try…". If you know a street, a place that needs hands, or somebody having a rough year, tell us.