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OPERATION: Sack Lunch, now in it's thirteenth year, has served more than 850,000 meals, and handed out thousands of new sleeping bags, new white socks and underwear, blankets, hygiene kits and other basic life necessities. When I made the original 30 lunches thirteen years ago, I had no idea or vision that my life would take this path. Now we serve 3500 meals each week and we are the largest and only health department compliant outside congregate meal and basic necessities provider in the state of Washington.
One person can have an idea, a commitment, and be a catalyst, and an inspiration. To sustain an idea, to see it grow over the years and implement positive change in the lives of those served and indeed the world takes community. What I have learned in the past 13 years is that community can be as small as a girl scout troupe or as large as a city. The common ground being deciding together that, even with different opinions, positive involvement in some way can change the entire world.
There is a saying that if you help save one life, you have saved the entire world. Sometimes, the smallest act of kindness, is the thing that matters the most.
Homelessness happens for so many reasons, and there are so many myths surrounding the reality. Over the years, I have been able to peel away some of those myths for myself, and to educate the greater community by speaking at schools, businesses, faith and civic based organizations on poverty, hunger, discrimination awareness, and community service.
The things I have learned are that we all have a name, a face, and a story. Some choose homelessness. For many there is no choice. The homeless are children, the elderly, and the mentally and physically challenged. They are frightened women, lost men, and abused kids. Some are substance abusers. Yet the first time a person sticks a needle in their arm they have no idea they could become an addict.
What can we do for such an overwhelming problem? Sometimes it as simple as helping one person at a time, for just that moment.
There are other things I have learned in the past thirteen years: some practical, some just personal insight.
One is that doing the right thing is not always popular. Especially when there is controversy and prejudice surrounding an issue. It is not always easy. Another is that those you are serving need to be more important then a personal desire to do the service.
When I first started taking food down to the streets the police detained me every day. Because I encouraged people to loiter to eat, because I encouraged hundreds of people to congregate as they waited for my van, and because I did not give them a place to wash their hands before I served them. I overcame these minor obstacles. I was stubborn at first because I didn't like the authorities' interfering with what I was certain was correct action. I was stubborn at first because I didn't like the authorities' interfering with what I was certain was correct action.
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