【推荐1】David is a retired teacher. In October 2020, when the House of Commons voted against extending free school meals into the holidays, David started strategising with the school headteacher: “I said: ‘What are we going to do about this?’” At the last minute, the local council stepped in to fund free holiday meals but a seed had been planted, leaving David pondering (沉思) the wider issue of local food poverty. “It was evident there was a need for food support within the area,” says David.

David contacted a group of local residents who had expressed an interest, plus two friends who had worked with the UK food bank charity the Trussell Trust—inviting them to join him on a Zoom call to discuss food poverty during the Covid crisis and beyond. “We decided, everybody together, that we could do something,” David says.

The group recruited (招募) volunteers and the project took shape. They chose the name “The Sharehouse”, rather than “food bank”, to reflect the fact that the project would meet not only the need for local food support, but also the pressing desire many expressed to do something meaningful at a time of crisis. “It’s like an exchange, rather than a bank,” says David.

The nonprofit opened just six weeks after that first call in December 2020. “We had seven people,” says David, but by the following week, they had 40 clients, and it built steadily. Now they support 100-plus families three times a week, and have gone from having 12 volunteers to about 40. It has also worked with local services to offer support on everything from addiction to debt and benefits advice.

Welcoming a client for the first time is often one of the hardest moments. “Having to sit with somebody new and let it unfold—it’s very raw.” The Sharehouse has regulars, but other people fall off the radar, leaving David to wonder what has happened. “I wonder where they are now; what they’re doing. It can be emotional.”

The Sharehouse serves as a reminder of how effective collective action and community can be. For anyone wanting to volunteer, David’s advice is: “Be led by what inspires you, don’t be frightened and don’t overthink it.”

【推荐1】When someone is homeless or trying to recover from a natural disaster, they are in need of a lot of the basic life necessities that many of us take for granted (认为……是理所当然的). While people are often encouraged to donate canned goods, not everyone is thinking about things like shoes.

Of course, you can’t go looking for a new job or a home, if you have no shoes to walk in. One woman in Hays, Kansas took this into consideration, and found a way to help hundreds of people.

Payless stores were going out of business, and shoes were selling for as little as $1 per pair, so a woman named Addy Tritt bought out all the remaining shoes at the Hays Payless store—more than 200 pairs—and donated them to flood victims (灾民) in Nebrsska.

Those shoes were then included in a flood relief shipment taken to farmers in Nebraska by Fort Hays State University. Tritt, who recently graduated from FHSU’s human resources program, wanted to “pay it forward”.

“I have been so lucky,” she said. “There have been so many great people in my life who have inspired me. I see so many terrible things in the news. So many people have helped me when I was down. They influenced me so much that I want to help if I can.”

Tritt has a history of charitable (慈善发) acts. She has donated more than 60 bags of school supplies to Hays students, and organized a baby clothes drive and two supply drives for the animal shelter.

“I really feel I have been directed and guided to help people,” she said. “If you can do something for someone else, you need to find a way even if it is a pair of shoes.”

【推荐3】Peter Kline has run over 100 marathons. But what makes him so remarkable is that he has finished 45 of those marathons while pushing young people with disabilities in front of him. Kline wants them to know the joy of running, too.

Kline started hitting the road when he was in his early fifties after running a 10K and then he began running marathons. His friend Scott Patrick suffered from a brain cancer, and asked Kine to run to raise money for cancer research. Kline helped Patrick and other volunteers raise about $60,000.

Being able to help others through his beloved sport made an impression. Kline knew of a father and a son who would run races together—the father pushing his son with disabilities as he completed the course. But, he wondered, “What about kids who don’t have a dad to do that?”

After being connected to a woman with two daughters who have cerebral palsy（脑瘫）, he decided to run the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon in 2012 with one of the girls. The little girl loved it, and KJine said his mission to share his love of the sports just started rolling.

He has been calling the mission “Marathons with Meaning”. Kline has a business card that says “Marathons with Meaning” and wherever he sees young people with disabilities, he just goes up to the parents and says, “If your kid ever wants to run a marathon, let me know.”

Kline said he paid for everything having to do with the race himself out of his own pocket. “It feels better that way of giving back to society.” The young people he pushes have ranged in ages from 8 to 32 and have many types of disabilities. “They love it,” Kline said. “They absolutely love the sounds, the noises, the feelings. The other runners are always very kind. They give them high-fives.”