Still looking for suggestions and participants for Day 6’s working out with buddies!

But, onward to Day Seven! Today’s tip: Lend a Hand From Home.

Want to do good but can't manage to get away from your desk? Peruse VolunteerMatch.org's megadatabase of virtual volunteer opportunities for a listing of things you can do from just about anywhere, such as mentoring a child online.

After talking with Self editor Dana Points about all the ways she tries to inject the do-gooding into her life, I am all in, baby. I checked out VolunteerMatch.org and found tons of really cool volunteer opportunities in my area, things like being a puppeteer! And a museum docent (which is really just something like "cruise director" but with a much cooler name)! And teaching people to read. And helping kids make art projects. How cool is all of that? But I’m fooling myself. My schedule right now is ridiculous, between a full-time job, two part-time jobs, going to graduate school and trying to have a life. As cool as all of these things sound, I know that if I commit to giving a two-hour puppet show once a week, my head will explode and this scheduling house of cards is going to come toppling down. However, online mentoring? That I can totally do. I signed up to be a virtual mentor to a teenager at Icouldbe.org after reading their statement that says, “While some of our mentors are able to schedule the time during the work day, others choose to incorporate icouldbe into their afternoons, evenings and weekends. We recommend seeing what works best for you and scheduling accordingly.”

Rock on! Perfect!

This closely controlled system offers anonymous mentoring through their Web portal (which protects the kids from pervs), so they will be running employment verifications, background checks and criminal activity checks on me, but since my permanent record is as clean as a whistle (although there was that lost library book back in 1981 that the librarian threatened would haunt me until my dying day) I should start working with my little anonymous teenager sometime in the next few weeks, all during snatched minutes and stolen breaks during the week. Easy enough! Who doesn’t have an extra 60 minutes a week to make a difference in someone’s life?  Day Seven might not be as immediately rewarding as playing with a puppy, but in the long run, it’s making the world a better place and damn, that’s some satisfying stuff, right there.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this One-Month Makeover is going to turn me into Mother Teresa. —Weetabix