Community Service Beyond Homeless Outreach

For some of us, homelessness isn’t as big of an issue as it might be in a much larger city.  Homeless outreach is one of the more popular RLSH community service projects.  If you live in an area with either a rather low homelessness problem or perhaps seasonal homelessness (due to extreme cold weather), you might want to focus on one of these other community service broad topics:

• Women’s health and safety

• Minority health and safety

• Literacy

• Food bank (or other food pantry service)

• Community health (blood bank, health fair, etc - often provides general health to lower class)

• Litter & local beautification (park, cemetery, trails, neighborhoods, etc)

• Elderly support

• Fundraising for local charities

• Safety (red cross, water safety, outdoor safety, winter clothing drives, etc)

• Environmentalism (recycling, plant trees, conservation, clean up waterways, etc)

• Animals (charity, conservation, etc)

• Local arts (music, books, visual art, performance art, etc)

• Law enforcement (missing person search, fundraising, etc)

Quiet Efforts

It's possible to quietly do some of these community service things.  For example, while on patrol you could easily pick up litter as you go on your route.  Another example: you could just sign up to spend a day volunteering for a local service event, but in RLSH uniform, like cleaning up a waterway or volunteering at a food bank or promoting local arts.

Loud Efforts

Loud efforts are going to be where you do some heavier promoting to reach your goals.  This might be more along the lines of “come to this event” or “help us raise funds for this charity” or “look at all the support we have for ---”.  A HOPE event is definitely a loud effort. (See HOPE Events)

"There's always a need for some kind of altruism in the world." - Dusk Citizen

Why Consider Community Service

• Helping others makes you feel good

• Good publicity for you and the RLSH community

• Builds stronger ties to the community and individuals

• Addresses local needs and issues that may be overlooked

• Exposes the public to the RLSH community in a positive way

---

On an entire other note, if you are an RLSH, please take a moment to fill out this RLSH 2026 Demographics Survey. It's anonymous. Just looking to gather some general information to study. It will end up becoming an article after the end of the year.

The February "Notes From The Rooftops" will be about "Film/TV That Helped Inspired You and How" [as an RLSH].  Keep it to roughly 500 words.  If you want to contribute (active or retired RLSH only), please send an email to Raven (raven@herocore.online).  If I get no responses, then this will be the last of this feature. Deadline: January 31st

If there is something you would like to see me discuss here on Herocore, please feel free to contact me. raven@herocore.online