Volunteering and Insurance

riverherring

Hey all. I've been around the neighborhood a couple of months now and been following the boards closely. I live on St Marks in the Prospect Heights / Crown Heights disputed area. The evidence seems to point strongly tin Crown Heights' favor, but why sohuld that get in the way of a good argument? All the other posts have been a great help in familiarizing myself with the neighborhood - and quite amusing as well. So, thanks.
Anyways, I have two questions:

1. Anyone know of any good short term medical plans. I need two months of coverage starting next monday until insurance from by new job kicks in. The short term insurance I've had does not work in New York.

2. I'm looking for a place to volunteer or otherwise keep busy in the community one or two evenings a week. I feel pretty cut off from the community in my apartment, and I'm always home by 6 looking for something to do, so I thought this would be a great way to solve both problems. The library has after school homework help, which sounds great, but you need to start either at 4 or 5, which I can't do.
Wonderful. I look forward to hearing some responses...

bklyntransplant

Riverherring, you can try NY Cares for volunteering opportunities. Their website is www.nycares.org; you can search by type of activity (environmental, education, etc), location and time. They put on two or three larger community projects a year - I their get-the-parks-ready-for-spring project will be coming up shortly - in addition to smaller monthly or weekly projects.

Sorry I can't help with the insurance thing, though :-(

sterling2000

I second the New York Cares suggestion. This is a great organization with hundreds of volunteer opportunities to fit just about any interest and skillset. Their two big events each year are the city-wide parks clean-up in the spring (I actually organized 100+ volunteers at a couple of these) and a fall school clean-up (I've led a few big groups at these, too).

The organization attracts a pretty diverse and good crowd of people, so it's also a good way to meet folks while doing some immediate good for the community.