Volunteer Opportunities

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Volunteer Opportunities Available:

Community Gardening Program
We manage 48 neighborhood garden sites throughout Albany, Rensselaer and Schenectady counties that support more than 700 gardening families. Additionally, we are committed to building two new gardens each year.

Help is always needed to develop new gardens and make repairs to existing ones. Much of the work is outdoors: rototilling, clearing brush, painting, building sheds, planting, weedwacking, soil spreading, and mowing. Other areas of involvement include: garden design, small engine maintenance & repair, and seed sorting.
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Garden Mentor
In an effort to improve the success of our novice gardeners we are asking experienced gardeners to help a new gardener catch the “gardening bug" through our Gardener Mentor Program. A few hours of your time during the growing season can make a huge difference to someone just getting started. With your help we can assure that an inexperienced garner will have a successful and bountiful first harvest. Mentors will get the satisfaction of knowing that they helped someone new to gardening learn to grow their own food! 
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Communication/Education/Events
CDCG organizes three annual events to help raise funds and visibility for the organization. We need volunteers to assist with such things as event planning, donation solicitation, posters and signage, setup, cleanup and volunteer recruitment and organization. Some events also require specialized assistance such as electrical expertise or stage management. Working on events is a terrific way to meet interesting people and have fun too! So you don’t have to get down ‘n dirty to help – just call us today!
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Administrative
We always need help in our office with mailings, phone calling, seed sorting and data entry, even if you don't have a lot of experience, we make sure it's a positive experience. If you have good computer skills, especially in the areas of graphic layout and design, help is also needed to help produce our quarterly newsletter and other informational materials. We also do several bulk mailings each year . . . and many hands (and a few laughs) make light work.
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Veggie Mobile
Capital District Community Gardens' new Veggie Mobile can use your help. We are looking for volunteers to assist on the Veggie Mobile on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to help flyer at our current locations to help us get the word out.  We ask that you can commit to approximately 1.5-2 hours for the day.  Check out our Veggie Mobile section to see locations that are convenient for you to help at.  If interested please call the office at 274-8685 to find out times that we will be handing out flyers.

The Veggie Mobile is making fresh fruits and vegetables available to low-income residents in Albany, Troy and Schenectady. Set up like a produce aisle on wheels, the Veggie Mobile makes scheduled stops each week in the neighborhoods we serve. Since launching the program on April 19th the community response has been overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic.

Join the fun on the Veggie Mobile and help us bring nutritious food to our region's families in need.
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Squash Hunger
Squash Hunger is a program of Capital District Community Gardens that collects excess fresh produce from gardeners around the Region for donation to area food pantries.

We will be looking for volunteers to pickup produce at our drop-off locations and deliver it to local food pantries for consumption by low-income families in need starting around June.  We are also always looking for gardeners or CSA's with extra produce that they can donate at one of our drop-off locations. 

Locations for pickups in 2007 included: Honest Weight Food Coop (Albany), Delmar Market Place (Delmar), Nichols SuperValue (Voorheesville), Greulich's Market (Schenectady), Cafe Nora (Latham), Troy Farmer's Market.

Help give families in need access to freshly grown produce by choosing one of these locations to make pickups and deliver them to food pantries - it's as simple as that!
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Street Tree Program
CDCG plants hundreds of city street trees each spring and fall in the City of Troy. Local high school and college students plant trees under the leadership of volunteer planting supervisors. Community Gardens staff conducts a planting demonstration before the volunteers move on to their designated planting sites. The one-day tree plantings are normally held in late April and late October.  Currently we won't have another planting planned until Fall of '08, if you are interested in volunteering for this project or have a group interested contact us in July or August when the planning process will begin again!
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Giving of Yourself
Here are just a few stories of people who are having a tremendous impact on our work: