One of the things I want to be cautious about is that I don't want to help out of a desire to help myself feel better. Unfortunately, I know a lot of people who do charitable things in order to feel better about themselves, not to actually help the overall situation.

I spoke to a friend after I wrote the initial post yesterday. I work with him and he used to be the manager of our homeless outreach program. The money for the program dried up and yesterday he was telling me that he feels the same way I do, and that during the program he would go out into the woods and onto the streets and pull people to shelters and get them help. He feels frustrated that he's no longer doing this type of work and the need is so great.

I have at times thought about maybe working at a shelter or opening my own to try to help out, but I'm not sure I'm cut out for that type of thing.