Share A Meal

Housing and Homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Share A Meal recognizes the moral urgency confronting us w/ regard to LA's vast homeless (unhoused) community. Permanent & even temporary emergency solutions all require precious time and stretched resources. In the meantime, we resolve each night to prevent as many people as possible from going to bed on an empty stomach. Time and again we hear from people we serve that our burritos are the only meal they might have had that day, especially in the encampments we serve that are isolated from outreach efforts and institutional outreach efforts and support. Folks living on the street cannot easily access services for a number of reasons: lugging their precious belongings is not easy, leaving them behind is risky. Navigating public transportation, limited physical mobility, mental health, language, literacy, and other disabilities all prevent those in need from accessing public assistance. That is why meeting people 'where they are' as the Share A Meal program does, is crucial.

Through its mobile kitchens (food trucks & support vans) the Share A Meal program has been meeting the needs of our unhoused community 'where they are' for 13 years. By meeting this vulnerable population on the streets where they struggle for basic needs we are not only easing that struggle, but just as importantly we are building trusting relationships. Each night volunteers pack 150-200 fresh burritos, bottled water, and humanitarian aid supplies and walk established service routes across Los Angeles. We serve hot meals with our own hands with dignity and respect. Share A Meal serves any community member who might experience food insecurity on any given night, although we primarily serve people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Our burritos are accessible for a variety of dietary restrictions and can be mass produced on short notice. Our volunteer base is composed of community members of all ages and backgrounds. They serve alongside university student volunteers from Share A Meal Campus clubs at USC, UCLA and LMU. This student/community member collaboration serves the program well. Over the course of the pandemic the number of people we meet along our outreach routes continues to grow and we are trying to grow our capacity to meet this increased need. This grant will help fund grocery, pantry, food service supplies, service vehicle expenses and other expenses involved in maintaining all the regulatory requirements for providing public meal service.

Each year we see the success of the Share A Meal program from four perspectives. First, the increasing demand from the unsheltered population for our meal and humanitarian aid service year after year. Second is the trust-building relationship between our program volunteers and the individuals we serve. As one burrito recipient commented: "You don't just serve us meals, you also restore our faith and trust in humanity." Third, the trust we have built with this marginalized community becomes a bridge between this community and the many government agencies and community service providers there to serve them. Without a trusted "friend" to give direction, one unsuccessful try by a homeless person to gain access to services or benefits can discourage all future attempts as futile. Last, volunteering with Share A Meal raises one's consciousness around homelessness. Our volunteer experience plants a seed of service with students and a successful model to expand to more universities thrives.

Annually we help meet the basic needs of tens of thousands of people we serve. Nightly hard counts of meals served help us to adjust the number of meals needed, based on how well our resources are meeting the demand. But our impact is also intangible. We meet and form relationships with thousands of people across the year and City, and our consistent presence signals not only a warm meal weekly for many people, but also reassurance that society still values our unhoused and food challenged neighbors. We hold ourselves accountable to our mission through capturing and analyzing the following metrics for success: meals served (nightly counts), volunteers engaged (nightly counts), and relationships formed. Our efforts seek to meet the needs of day-to-day hardships while working to ultimately end homelessness through instilling trust again in people and systems base on the knowledge that we care.