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Not everyone can spend a year or two as a full-time volunteer. That’s why some long-term faith-based volunteer programs have started offering new opportunities for those with only a week or a summer to spare.

Though short-term programs are sometimes criticized as superficial fixes, Katherine Hamm, S.C., says programs like the ones she helps run through the Sisters of Charity of New York are less about the type of work and more about building relationships.

Through Charity in the City, young women serve in soup kitchens and in other ways. The Sisters of Charity also offer volunteer opportunities on their nearby organic farm.

Sister Hamm has also assisted with volunteer trips to New Orleans. “No one thinks we’re going to change the world in a week. But for the one woman whose house we were working on, we were giving her hope,” she said. “You’re planting seeds, so people see how change happens, and people see how their gifts are recognized in this environment. There’s a connectedness between all people who have the time to reach out to others.”

This article appears in July 5 2010.

Kerry Weber joined the staff of America in October 2009. Her writing and multimedia work have since earned several awards from the Catholic Press Association, and in 2013 she reported from Rwanda as a recipient of Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship. Kerry is the author of Mercy in the City: How to Feed the Hungry, Give Drink to the Thirsty, Visit the Imprisoned, and Keep Your Day Job (Loyola Press) and Keeping the Faith: Prayers for College Students (Twenty-Third Publications). A graduate of Providence College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously worked as an editor for Catholic Digest, a local reporter, a diocesan television producer, and as a special-education teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.