Looks like we didn’t beat the 55K of last year (which admittedly, was a very weird year) – but folks stepped up for kids in Durham County and there is 21K before matching to buy food for kids! I know some folks had caps on how many donors they could match (I ended up dropping my cap) – but even if all the matchers stopped at 250 donors, that’s another 10K! THAT’S GONNA BUY A LOT OF FOOD FOR THE KIDS! (And there are donations still trickling in this morning, yay!) Yes, I’m using a lot of exclamation points this morning!

And to think, 7 years ago, it was $500 and a Hyundai Elantra full of food. Now, it’s many thousands of dollars, a 501c3, big assed trucks, and a man named Ryan who works at Costco on North Pointe Drive who is a LEGEND now. (Sam’s Club *canceled* the food order in 2019 – Ryan at Costco stepped up and said, “Yes, we will help you spend that money!”)

I love this on so many levels. First, food insecurity is a very real problem in this country – this at least puts a tiny dent in it. I can only imagine the relief of a parent on a tight budget finding out they are getting ~2 weeks of groceries to cover winter break.

And second – it’s totally selfish, but it just makes me feel GOOD. It feels good to do something I know concretely helps people, and it feels good to see so many others do the same. (If I lived in the Research Triangle area, I’d take time off work to help bag everything up.)

There are a lot of garbage people in the world, but there are so many good people that care.