The company I work for has this awesome program where we get five days a year to volunteer in the community and still get paid. They even arrange a bunch of volunteer gigs we can do as a group.
Today, we went to World Vision, a group that sends clothes, medical supplies, books, school supplies, etc to other countries. We took new clothes and shoes, donated by the manufacturer, split them into boxes by gender and type. For example, men's sweaters, men's pants, women's pants, etc. Our group was ten people and we did one pallet full of clothes, a pallet of shoes, and a pallet of men's suits. It was nice to be able to point to the boxes we packed and know that we did that. In a way, it's more gratifying than working on software.
But, I have to say: real work is a lot harder than working on software. When I get home from writing code, my brain is tapioca, but put me in the yard to do manual labor and I'm ready to go. When I got home today, my brain was tapioca and I'm physically exhausted. My guess is that doing real work on a daily basis wouldn't drain me so much mentally: the newness of the work really drained my brain. This is perhaps the first time I've valued a cushy desk job. Yes, it's bad on my back, my eyes, and my long-term health to sit so much, but at least the physical side is easy and it's only the mental work that's hard.
And, to all the volunteer organizations out there: if you have a set of rules that govern the way volunteers do their jobs, don't be surprised when a group of geeks tries to optimize the rules for you. Geeks, what can you do?