How you can help

Want to help out? The local Jewish community offers hundreds of opportunities, from assisting with seniors or schoolchildren to hands-on building projects.

Here are some suggestions from the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay Volunteer Action Center. For information on these and other projects, call Ilana Schatz, (510) 839- 2900, ext. 261, e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or go to www.jfed.org/volunteer/vac.htm.

• Usher at youth chorus concerts.

• Construct flower boxes and birdhouses for new Habitat for Humanity homes.
• Read to people who have impaired vision
• Use your craft skills and teach classes.
• Research environmental issues.
• Monitor the media for discriminatory advertising.
• Compile oral histories of seniors.
• Participate in "Sukkot in April/Rebuilding Together," a Sunday, April 25, project involving more than 350 participants and 12 agencies, renovating homes and homeless shelters.

• Knit blankets for babies at San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center.
• Build housing at Bay View/Hunter's Point with Habitat for Humanity.
• Serve as a tutor/mentor with the On the Mark program through the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children's Services.
• Assist at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center.
• Serve lunches at the Montefiore Center Center.