The Things We Notice: From Everyday Awareness to Knowledge, Care, and Action, October 2026

The Things We Notice:
From Everyday Awareness to Knowledge, Care and Action

October 2026

From KNOWING comes CARING, and from CARING comes CHANGE
– “A Plastic Ocean”, 2016 movie

  An opportunity to Serve and to practice Being Present

Two weeks ago, my family and I volunteered with the Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild near Washington, D.C., picking okra, peppers, eggplant, pumpkins and pulling weeds in the greenhouse. Having lived in cities all my life, I had never imagined spending time in a garden or getting my hands dirty. Working with the soil and possibly encountering a scorpion-like crawler or dead mouse was humbling, and physically challenging (!), especially as I slowly and surely approach my senior years. I had some idea of what to expect when I signed up, and I’m glad I took the time to experience it.

I have to say that I was also drawn to the opportunity because it took place at a monastery. Having been raised Catholic and still practicing, I was curious to see it. The beautiful buildings and gardens, located near the Catholic University and the Basilica in Washington, D.C., surprised me because I had not expected to find such a place so close to the city. From reading and speaking with other volunteers, I learned that the Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild grows and harvests produce for food pantries and nonprofit organizations serving neighbors in need. DC Central Kitchen has been among the recipients of the Guild’s produce. And as the growing season ends, volunteers help clear and prepare the garden for winter.

The real reason I signed up, however, was to volunteer. At this stage of my life, I wanted to do something practical, outdoors, and useful to people who are especially vulnerable. The people who really know me can probably understand why this sounds like me. Retired after a satisfying career and originally coming from a developing country and now living in North America, I feel very fortunate to have the time and energy to contribute. The physical work reminded me to remain grateful, grounded, and attentive to others and that helping can take many forms, including work done far from a desk.

Volunteering in this community garden felt like one way I could contribute to society and supporting issues that matter to me. But it was also a chance to practice being present, to do something with my hands and pay attention to a task that was in front of me. Sometimes we get so busy jumping from one activity to another without stopping to ask why we do things. I am certainly often like that. And busyness, as many of us probably already know, doesn’t always mean we’re spending time on the things that really matter.

From Noticing to Curiosity to CARING

My path to volunteering at the community garden and DC Central Kitchen began at a Knowledge Management Community event at the Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr. Memorial Library during Global Knowledge Week in October 2025. After the event, my colleagues and I went to the MLK café, where I saw staff handing out boxed meals. My local colleague noticed it first. And seeing my puzzled look, he explained that meals were provided to people in need, including some people experiencing homelessness and whom I had seen near the entrance. I had noticed people gathering at the library on earlier visits.  But I had never really understood why. So after saying our goodbye’s, I returned to the MLK café and learned that it was operated by the non-profit organization, DC Central Kitchen. I also learned that those free takeaway meals for library patrons are distributed through a separate partnership associated with the library’s Coffee & Conversations events, which was launched in December 2025.

That observation lit a light bulb for me. I had been living near Washington, D.C. for a few years now. But being the capital city of a wealthy country, I hadn’t expected to see so many people experiencing homelessness. I found it sad and wondered about it and wanted to understand how organizations like the DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) helped people experiencing food insecurity. I’m also realizing now that seeing is really only the beginning of knowing about something. If my colleague hadn’t mentioned the free given meals to the homeless, I might have walked out the MLK Café without realizing the community service it was actually doing.

Once I understood, I became really curious. After saying our goodbyes with the colleagues, I went back and interviewed the manager of the MLK Café on call that day. “What else do you do? How can volunteers help? How can I as an individual help? Is there a way for me to contribute?” I learned more about their work and the opportunities to volunteer through their portal.  From my questions, I also found out that the DCCK not only provided meals but also offered culinary training and employment support, to help people become more economically stable or get back on their feet.

From Caring to ACTING

After all that information I received, I went home and dug deeper into the DC Central Kitchen website to see what an individual like me could do to contribute.  I decided to act and looked for slots to volunteer. And the ones that seemed to be available for individuals like me were for Food Preparation in one of their 3 DC locations.  I signed my family up and we volunteered 3x.  Once, we even brought my parents-in-law with us to share the experience.

“Gleaning” (that gardening activity I described earlier) in the Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild was also another way of volunteering. But it was just one of the few locations the DC Central Kitchen partnered with to do this activity. And I found it quite challenging to find slots to sign up.  So after attempting many times, I decided to just reach out directly to the Monastery to see if we could sign up through them.  This turned out to be a more efficient way of getting a favorable response.  And my family showed up one Saturday for 4 hours and helped them with the tasks they needed help with. And I’m so happy we were able to get another slot and opportunity to help, this coming November.

So what?  What the Experience Taught Me

Looking back, I am reminded that how we spend our time often begins with paying attention. There’s a line I remember from a leadership course I took years ago which said, “It’s easy to miss something, especially if you’re not looking for it.” We can walk past something every day and not really see it. And even when we do notice, we can easily just stop there and say, “That’s interesting,” and carry on. But for me, now the next steps are curiosity, asking questions, learning and knowing more about it, and deciding whether what I have noticed merits action.

That sequence matters. Paying attention, noticing, being curious, finding out more, caring, and finally doing something. Awareness also doesn’t automatically lead to action. Curiosity helped me move from seeing a situation, to understanding that there was a way I could participate. And action didn’t have to be dramatic. It could mean showing up in a kitchen, harvesting vegetables, or even pulling weeds.

What does all this have to do with Knowledge Management (KM)?

They say that “where attention goes, energy flows.” When I am fully present in a conversation, either with a KM practitioner or anyone else, I am better able to notice what matters to the person I’m speaking to, recognize patterns across conversations, and identify knowledge or information that may be useful to the wider community. This allows me then to decide what is worth sharing with others as well as consider the context, relationships, and shared concerns that give that knowledge meaning. 

And isn’t that one important purpose of knowledge management? Knowledge work is not limited to the office or workplace, nor is it simply about gaining that expertise in managing knowledge. To me, it’s about being able to act on a change people desire because they have the right knowledge reach the people who need it, when they need it, and in a form they can understand and use. In that sense, it’s a way of working that can turn bits of data into knowledge that supports action, desired change, and sound decisions on the matters important to us. And it begins with curiosity, attention, care, learning, and the ability to act.   

In this seemingly mundane activity of volunteering, the change I wanted to see was to be part of a solution that addressed food insecurity here in a city near where I live. Because I thankfully had that sense then to notice what was going on and be curious about it, I was able to connect the dots which led me to be more intentional about volunteering in the DCCK.

Community events bring people together in order to know what matters to them

And perhaps this is the reason why I organize KM community events, and especially IN-PERSON ones.  I believe that the more practitioners come together to share what they’re noticing, questioning, and learning, the community gains a clearer understanding of what people care about, worry about or value, including subjects that may not otherwise surface. Thes signals can help participants shape future conversations together. And I see this kind of attentive convening as one form of leadership in knowledge work.

A quote I learned, thanks to a course about “Conversational Leadership” I took several years ago, has stuck with me.  And it says,

”One of the ways of thinking about Leadership is thinking about
Convening Conversations that might not happen otherwise.”
– Patricia Shaw

An invitation to Participate

And if you’ve read my article this far, I invite you to also take a chance and visit the DC Central Kitchen Volunteer Portal to be part of that change to help feed those experiencing food insecurity.

Thank you for your attention and may we live these days with ease.