Before David Polinchock could contact his parents, track down his friends in Manhattan, or comprehend the devastation in the city, his inbox was bursting with email messages from people he'd never met. The messages came from Australia, from London, from Romania - and they all said the same thing: What can I do?

'Before September 11, I had believed that the Company of Friends was a business networking group - an association that people joined to make connections and find gigs,' says Polinchock, the New Jersey - based volunteer coordinator for Fast Company's readers' group in New York. 'Now I understand that this is a genuine community.'

Just hours after the towers fell, Polinchock's colleagues in New York were offering to help stranded travelers, suggesting ways to conserve energy, and scouring the city for temporary office space to house corporate refugees. And they weren't alone. Eight people contacted Polinchock within 48 hours of the attacks to offer a bed or a hot meal to his parents, who were stranded in Anchorage, Alaska. A Seattle CoF member offered to drive 3,000 miles to help with local relief efforts.

On September 25, the New York chapter met for the first time since September 11 in an office located about one mile from the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. The agenda: to determine innovative, sustainable ways for CoF members to help their fellow New Yorkers recover from the crisis.

So far, the New York group is planning to assemble a task force of business executives and lawyers who can help displaced entrepreneurs navigate the daunting applications for federal aid and assistance. Outside the business community, members are already volunteering at blood banks, soup kitchens, and triage centers at ground zero. Others are beginning to organize CoF coalitions to help families touched by the tragedy with grocery shopping, snow shoveling, and after-school day care in the months ahead.

'I don't have 15 colleagues to talk to over coffee,' says Polinchock, a free agent who runs his own business. 'These community meetings give me an opportunity to work through my emotions, engage in debates, and begin healing from September 11.'

Psychological recovery has been the focus of CoF meetings in other cities, including Montclair, New Jersey, where members met with career-and-life coach Laura Berman Fortgang on September 25. Likewise, the Washington, DC group named its October 3 meeting 'Fast in the Face of Disaster' and set out to ask, 'Where do we go from here? What's important now? How can we be of service?'