Feeding the homeless, one lunch at a time.

Despite the current recession, the United States continues to be one of the most economically prosperous nations in the world. However, the U.S. has one of the highest poverty rates among industrialized countries according to HungerReport.org. For a country that has so much food that its citizens are plagued with an epidemic of obesity, we have an alarming number of Americans that die from hunger each day, many of them are children. All it takes is a drive down to L.A.’s skid row— the area that contains one of the largest stable populations of homeless persons in the United States—to see that hunger is very much a reality in our cities. Locally, in Orange County, one of the most affluent districts in the world, over 456,000 people are at-risk of going hungry sometime every month.

Although there are many coordinated efforts in place by local governments to help end hunger, it falls short of the needs of many people. It takes the help of everyday people to help these government and private shelters make ends meet. These shelters rely on food and monetary donations to provide food to the homeless population. It is with the help of ordinary people that some of the less fortunate have a chance of survival. These people are a ray of hope amongst the darkness of hunger and poverty.

One such person is Zahra Billoo, a recent law school graduate who has spearheaded her own initiative to tackle hunger. Her project is called Operation: Brown Paper Bag, which aims to organize and distribute brown paper bag meals to as many homeless people as they can. I had the pleasure of interviewing Zahra about her project, and she was kind enough to take out some time from saving the world to share with me the details of how her inspiring operation works. Below is a transcript of our conversation.

Q: How did this “operation” get started? What was your motivation? Where did the idea come from?
A: There were about 4 of us, all of us were friends from Cal State Long Beach who went to a homeless feeding event in Pasadena during thanksgiving, last November. There are always events for the homeless on holidays but never in between holidays. There’s clearly a need and there aren’t enough channels so we decided that we would come up with our own event and there’s enough time and money amongst volunteers to get it done. All of the big events have feeding, but not on a random Saturday’s or weekdays. So we pulled it together.

Q: Was this your first time doing this?
A: Our first time was in December of 2008, the third one was this June, and they are done quarterly. We get together at one persons house and then distribute them [the meals] at shelters. We’ve been to between 5 and 16 different shelters. We’ve made over 2,500 lunches distributed thus far.

Q: Where did this event take place? Why did you choose this location?
A: We did Google searches to see what shelters were nearby, and then we went to the recommended searches.

Q: How many people volunteered?
A: Alhumdolillah we’ve had over 25 – 30 each time we’ve done this.

Q: What types of meals did you serve?
A: Usually it is PB&Jelly sandwiches, a boxed juice drink, chips, cookies and fruit snacks.

Q: How much does this event end up costing?
A: Each lunch ranges from a one dollar to $1.50. A basic lunch is a dollar at most, if we add in produce it adds on about an extra 30 cents an item because fresh produce is expensive. Our total cost per event is approximately between $1100.00 and $1300.00 dollars.

Q: You were also in law school while you were coordinating these events, which is very time consuming, how did you come up with the time to put this all together?
A: Just working with great people, its been surprising how helpful people have been. Sending out a few emails and working through Facebook is how we raise the money, and then we just have good coordination, and then we do all our shopping at Costco, so its fairly doable. If there’s a will there’s a way.

Q: That is very inspiring. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
A: I started doing this in San Francisco in September on my own. People in san Diego and in the Inland Empire have inquired about how to start their own. It’s not easy but it’s very doable. In San Francisco we gave out about 300 lunches a month. Even a few lunches helps the hungry. Even one lunch is one less hungry person.

A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking through details and complications and that slows us down. I would recommend someone just move forward, there is nothing to lose.
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If you would like to help Operation: Brown Paper Bag, or would like more information about them, you can contact them at their email address at brownbagbunch@gmail.com. Or you can follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BrownBagBunch.