The experience was super simple environment, easy going, and a lot of fun. We connected with each other on a different level, while having the time of our lives! We hit the streets near the Santa Monica Pier and Venice Boardwalk looking for anyone that could use a meal. We smiled when asking people if they were hungry. We exchanged pleasantries while handing over our creations. We acknowledged their humanity, as well as our own. When we were done, we felt awesome and wanted to share with our friends! So we did. We shared on each of our social media platforms, jokingly tagging our posts with #HashtagLunchbag as an ode to hashtags…. plus it rhymed with what we were distributing (simple enough, right?).
We didn’t originally intend to repeat our efforts but shortly after sharing, we received an abnormally large amount of likes/comments/calls/texts/emails from people telling us how amazing this looked & wanting to join us for “the next one.” Riding the high of our good deeds, we decided to repeat our efforts a month later in January 2013. More of our friends joined, more meals were made, and more people were fed. Once again, we felt awesome and once again, we shared. The ripple continued and more people were hitting us up wanting to know how they could get involved. We ran it back for another go ’round inFebruary 2013, growing out of our apartment to a local restaurant. We set a goal of making 1,000 meals. 100 hundred people showed up for the party. We added love notes of encouragement to each meal to further acknowledge those we were feeding, reminding them that they weren’t forgotten. Just like we did, everyone went on to share their experiences on their social platforms, intriguing and inspiring their friends and their followers.
The ripple continued and ever since, we’ve hosted #HashtagLunchbag events at least once a month in Los Angeles at The Parlor in West Hollywood. What’s more amazing is through our committed efforts, we began to see others, friends and strangers alike, replicate our model. We shared our story with anyone interested and empowered many to bring our movement to their local community with simple do-it-yourself instructions. To date, our movement has grown to 100+ cities hosting #HashtagLunchbag events around the globe! We never thought that our small actions one Christmas morning would have gone global, inspiring others to spread love, one lunch bag at a time.
It wasn’t long before we realized that our actions weren’t about ending hunger or homeless, but feeding a different kind of hunger that each of us has inside of ourselves; the innate need for connection to humanity. We are building communities around food and acknowledging the humanity of those forgotten, while watching the power of each deed shift the world around us. For the first time in the history of the world, we are all leaders and have the ability to inspire through the platforms we have built for ourselves (with a little help from the power of the internets).
