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House of Good Deeds
Leon Feingold, the founder and executive director of the House of Good Deeds, explains how his life's mission came to be.
NEW YORK - In a warehouse in Flushing, Queens, on Tuesday, boxes of free stuff were being given away.
"Today we have a warehouse full of toys, clothes, housewares that were donated to us by a company that's going out of business," House of Good Deeds Executive Director Leon Feingold said. "We've been saving them all here and we're giving them all away today to individuals and companies."
The organization rescues clothing, housewares, electronics, and more from going into the trash and then gives it away.
"We try to find new homes for it," Feingold said, "and we do it all for free."
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He and his wife Yuanyuan Wang founded House of Good Deeds in January 2017, a little more than a month after Wang was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died months after the organization was up and running. She was 39.
In her final months, Feingold said, the couple received an outpouring of support.
"We were completely overwhelmed but people came from all over the world — people we knew, strangers to help us," he said. "They raised money, they used their connections to find people to help us and this is just our way of paying it forward."
House of Deeds has dual purposes: to help those in need and save usable stuff from going to a landfill.
They spread the word of their giveaways through their social media pages.
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On the day we visited their Flushing warehouse, the bulk of goods was going to the environmental nonprofit Big Reuse. In other instances, they've donated refrigerators to community food banks.
"This is one way of keeping my wife's memory alive because this was her idea and it's something we both really enjoyed, volunteering together," Feingold said.
Jodi Way is a longtime volunteer.
"Surprise is a way to create joy and some of these things come at a moment's notice, so it's a way to create joy in this world," Way said.
To either volunteer or donate goods, visit House of Good Deeds.