Volunteering with us: two hours or twenty

There is more than cooking. The roles that need filling most weeks:

• Driving delivery runs, mostly to people a few streets away
• Packing and sorting produce that arrives through OzHarvest
• Cooking on Social Cooking Crew nights, around a hundred meals at a time
• Sitting with somebody at the hub over a cup of tea
• The garden, at Rozelle or Mort Bay
• Setting up for events, from barbecues to Cinema Under the Stars
• A fair amount of unglamorous admin

Some people do one delivery run a week. Some are here most days. Both are useful, and nobody keeps a leaderboard.

You do not need experience. You need to be reasonably reliable and reasonably kind. We will show you everything else, and you will not be left on your own on your first shift.

Getting started is a short conversation about what you would enjoy and what hours suit, some paperwork depending on the role, and then a first shift alongside somebody who has done it before.

The people who deliver meals with Good in the Hood will tell you they got as much out of it as they gave. Volunteers knock, and they stay a minute. Most live within a few streets of the person they are delivering to, which means the neighbourhood gets a little more knitted together every week, one doorstep at a time.

For some volunteers this is also a pathway. Our 2026 to 2029 plan names volunteer pathways through Good in the Hood as one of the local answers to meaningful work, alongside inclusive roles in community services and hospitality.

To start, send us a volunteer enquiry, call 02 9556 9500, or drop in. If you are not sure you have anything to offer, come anyway. The tea does not make itself.