What is 10 Lunches?

The Scout © Joel Thomason

On a typical Friday night in Kansas City, an ordinary guy headed downtown to celebrate his best friend's 26th birthday.  Parking along Grand Boulevard, he couldn't help but notice the homeless man standing outside his car staring in.  As the ordinary guy got out of his car, the man approached him asking for whatever financial assistance he could spare.  The ordinary guy offered what money he had in his wallet (2 dollars, not much), and the two conversed as they walked up the street.  What poured out was an incredibly sad, and unfortunately common these days, story of the financial downturn driving the man into life on the street.  As the two men parted ways, they shook hands; the ordinary guy couldn't help but notice the icy cold temperature of the other man's hands.

This image of icy cold hands stuck with the ordinary guy, so, on January 5, 2009, he made a trip back to downtown Kansas City with a backpack full of ten lunches, each sack stuffed with a pair of gloves. His goal: pass out the lunches to those he encountered on the street with an apparent need. Along the way, a reporter looking for a story spotted him and decided to follow along. The next day the resulting article spotlighting this ordinary guy's act of service made it onto the front page of Kansas City Star. (Read the article here) The article generated an enormous response and thus 10 Lunches was born.

Why this particular story, this particular action, resonates with people may lie in it's simplicity. Make 10 lunches. Go find people that need them. And give them away. Anyone can do that. The key, however, is not the lunches but the idea that regular, everyday people can make a profound difference in the lives of others through simple acts of love and service. The key is for individuals to get creative with the the resources they have been given as they use them to serve other people.

To call 10 Lunches anything more than an idea at this point would be presumptuous. The hope, however, is that this idea grows arms and legs and hands and feet and begins to move in ways currently unimaginable. The evolution of this idea remains to be seen, yet the 10 Lunches vision is clear: mobilize a coalition of individuals around the world creatively serving those in need in their communities.

This blog is a work in progress. Like the 10 Lunches concept, the blog is grounded in the idea that it's better to do something than nothing. At the moment, we hope that it will serve as an avenue to communicate the development of this budding entity we call 10 Lunches. More importantly, we hope this blog can be a platform for individuals to engage one another in conversation in order to generate and implement creative ideas for serving the needs of individuals in their communities.

The bottom line is this: serving people is fun. Let's do it together.

- Joel