Hungry at Home - One Idea for Change

For all I know this idea has already been cast out there to make a change in our homes, but here is something I have been finding myself doing for several years, and I thought it might help if more people started doing. So, I did some reasearch, and some math, and here is what I have come up with.

In October of 2006, the population of America (USA) broke a landmark, 300 million. Today, we are at 304,063,731.

Roughly 3.5 million, or 1% of our nation's population are homeless, in that they spent a significant period of their life sleeping in automobiles, cardboard boxes, tents, caves or railcars. Roughly the same number of our population are considered malnourished with inadequate housing. Approximately 12% of our population is malnourished even with adequate housing.

This means that if just 75 million people in our country (that's 25%) pick one meal a week to buy a meal for a homeless person or someone in need, our country's level of malnourishment within homeless populations could be nearly eradicated.

This is by no means a cure for a nationwide problem. But now a-days I find most people (myself included) feel disassociated with the ability make a large change in the world. This is one way that collectively, we could make a huge change in the world, by buying one meal a week for someone in need.
---
Last week I asked someone I commonly see in Boulder, (known as the High Plains Traveller) if I could buy him anything that would help, perhaps a meal, or a warm drink, and he said all he could use was a Hot Chocolate at the moment. So, I walked up to the local cafe, and I bought him a large hot Chocolate with whip cream.  After I gave it back to him, we talked about some of the incense he was burning for a few minutes, and then I went my way.

Today, I passed someone else on an offramp, an older lady, with a sign for help. I decided I had some money to spare again, so I dropped my car off to get brakes, and walked over to the nearest Whole Foods. I bought a whole Rotisserie chicken for $10, and a two month supply of multivitamins for women for $10, for a total of $20.

I walked the 10 minutes over to her on the offramp, handed it to her, saying "I hope this helps."

She said thanks twice, and smiled widely when I told her it was a chicken. Then I turned and walked away, not knowing what else to say. I never know what to think other than if I was that lady, I think that would help me, but I always find myself wondering if I am really helping these people.  I must be helping these people, because I know for a fact that if 74.99 million people every week took it up on themselves to buy someone in need a meal, no one would be malnourished.

I always want to sit and talk to these people, for I would love to speak to someone. Being homeless and malnourished must be lonely at times. However, only a few times have I been able to successfully sit down and have a conversation in this circumstance. It seems that most times the difference in our worlds are so great, it is difficult to even speak to each other, as if we were of different language or culture.

Anyways, I have decided that this is going to be something I am personally pledging to myself to do every week. I hope you will join me in this pledge to help others for no other reason than if you were in such a situation, you would hope others kindness would keep you alive. Please turn your kindness into something powerful to keep someone alive, and please share this idea or post with other people.