Week 7

We had a very successful dinner-time Lunch Bunch trip tonight. It was 8 o'clock by the time we were ready to go and it was getting dark. We were a little nervous to be going to skid row tonight, but everything went very well and we passed out 48 meals in about an hour.




These babies were perfectly ripe and sweet.



Some of the kits included toothbrush and toothpaste or a nail grooming kit that I found at the 99cent store and people were very happy to receive these items.




Mere brought along a large ice chest to keep the water bottles cold.

It was dark by the time we got out, so we weren't able to take any pictures of the streets we visited, other than this tunnel. It is occupied by a dozen sleeping homeless at night.



One thing that stuck out to me tonight was seeing a young girl, her mother, and grandmother living on the streets. We must have looked strange pulling up to them at 9pm, asking if they wanted food, but they accepted. Lucky for us, Mere and I don't look very conspicuous. The young girl must have been only seven or eight years old. We gave them extra meals and water for later as well.

In the next week, I will be in Fresno and will have a Lunch Bunch trip in a new city. Mere will do a trip here in LA so we don't miss our regulars this week. We will keep you posted on our progress!

Donations

The best way to donate to Lunch Bunch until we get this paypal mess sorted out, is to purchase the items in my Etsy account. 100% of proceeds from the print and postcard sales will go to Lunch Bunch.

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade anabagayan.etsy.com

The Meanest City

Los Angeles ranks #1 on the list of meanest cities in a report put together by The National Coalition for the Homeless. The full report is here, scroll to page 36.

I have highlighted some of the main parts and bolded the important parts for the skimmers.

-Los Angeles was spending $6 million a year to pay for fifty extra police officers to crack down on crime in the Skid Row area at a time when the city budgeted only $5.7 million for homeless services...24 people were arrested 201 times...Many of the citations issued to homeless persons in the Skid Row area were for jaywalking and loitering, “crimes” that rarely produce writtencitations in Los Angeles outside of Skid Row.

-Moving homeless individuals from Skid Row not only takes them away from a familiar area, but also moves them farther from service providers. Around the time of the police crackdown on Skid Row the providers in surrounding neighborhoods, such as Santa Monica and Hollywood, noticed an increase in their homeless populations, a problem for which they were unprepared.

Mere and I start our route in Hollywood and look for people who are alone or hidden. Although we didn't know exactly why, we knew there was a good reason why some people chose to stay far from skid row or other areas with shelters and other service providers. I'm glad we pay special attention to these people, especially those that have chosen nicer, safer neighborhoods to live in.

-In October 2007, six homeless plaintiffs challenged a law that makes it illegal to sit or lay on sidewalks. The city agreed not to enforce the law between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. until it builds 1,250 units of permanent supportive housing. 1,250 new units of housing would only aid 2.6 percent of the city’s homeless population.

There is also a list of cities that prohibit FEEDING the homeless. Full list of cities here.

Santa Monica, CA has taken numerous steps to address the sharing of food with homeless persons in the community. The city’s ordinances directly limit food sharing in two ways. First, in a law recently passed by the City Council, the city has prohibited leaving food or clothing in city parks as a means of donation. Second, the city has an ordinance that requires any group who intends to “feed the needy” to first obtain a permit. In order to meet constitutional requirements, the city has amended language in another ordinance that prohibited the distribution of food on city streets and sidewalks without a permit. The new language exempts noncommercial food distribution from the ordinance’s scope.

'Silence' Winners

Lunch Bunch is pleased to announce the two winners of the 'Silence' print giveaway. Congratulations to Sven Davis and Bonnie Millard!


The prize, limited edition print of Silence.

We'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that has contributed. Your gifts during the past couple weeks will enable us to make meals and provide much needed items to the homeless for another three weeks! We know first-hand how much the meals, clothing and other donated items are appreciated by the people receiving them. We've seen faces smile and cry out of happiness, knowing that someone cares about them and is looking out for them. There are so many different types of people we are meeting and getting to know. I don't know how long Mere and I would have been able to do this without your help!

THANK YOU.

New Lunch Bunch Video

Thanks to Ara Devejian for filming and editing this video. He spent all day putting it together and it came out beautiful.

Week 6

Extra items included new socks, underwear, toothbrushes, combs, and snacks.

Lunch Bunch would like to thank Valerie, Vanessa, Estela G., Rod, Estela H., Ally, Sven, Diana, Jen, Chet, Nicholas, Tiffany, PrintsAhoy, Allison, Mathew, Penelope, Scott, Mary and Mere's lovely mother for all their support and contributions in the past couple weeks and for making lunch bunch bags extra special today. We were able to include bonus items in the bags (things that people asked us for last week) like new socks and underwear and toothbrushes and extra food items. We had 49 Bags today and spent and extra $30 on new socks from the 99 cent store. Each bag cost about $2.27 this time.


We got a new slicer from Mere's mom!

Since it's been so hot outside lately, we decided to get a cooler and put the water bottles in ice in the car so we can pass out cold water. This was a little extra work while handing the bags out but I like that we were able to fit extra items in the bags instead of the water.

There was some special people that we have been visiting regularly each week and we made customized bags for them. The nice lady in the blanket-fort community was so excited to see the toothbrush kit in her bag. Last week when we dropped off the two large bags of clothing to her community, she started crying. It seemed like no one had been nice to them in a long time and we want to do something special for them each week.


Ara took over my spot after I had a little accident with the new slicer.


This is how we do it.

Ara helped us out again this week in the car and he filmed some video footage of the streets. I will post that in the next couple days, once I'm finished editing it. We are also putting together a list of things our supporters can do to help Lunch Bunch and their community.


Most of the streets we drive down are covered in trash because there aren't enough bins in the area for people to throw their trash away properly.


Case in point.

In the meantime, all proceeds from the items in my Etsy shop will be donated to Lunch Bunch. You can purchase them here.

Postcard Set - $15 + sh


Limited Edition Print - $50 + sh

Donations

Paypal has decided we can no longer accept donations with their services so for the time being, if you'd like to contribute to Lunch Bunch, please email us directly until we set up another system that doesn't require us to turn into a business. Lunchbunchco@gmail.com

The raffle winners will be announced on the Wednesday, July 22nd.

Dinner Bunch

This week's contents cost $1.70 a bag, a record breaker for Lunch Bunch (by a nickel.)

Due to some schedule conflicts, Lunch Bunch was moved to Monday evening instead of Sunday. Almost everything went smoothly today. We made it out of the kitchen around 7, just in time for dinner. I bought ALL the groceries from Smart and Final this time and the prices were surprisingly reasonable. We can skip Food-4-Less from now on. My bill was $81 for 48 meals, bringing the cost per bag down from last week by a nickel.






A mountain of sandwiches, 48 baggies high.


Isn't this ridiculous? I'm not certain but I think it belongs to Food 4 Less, since it was sitting in front of the grocery store. I drove by the pile twice, it had been sitting out there all day.

I took some video footage of some of the streets we stop by when passing out the food, just to give you an idea of where we are going.

We met a sweet lady that has been living in a small blanket-fort community with her husband. There was a total of six people there today so we left the two large bags of clothing with them. Their rooms are all attached to each other and each one is about the size of a two-person tent, maybe smaller. The entire complex is crafted out of blankets and clothing. There were a lot of soft, thick jackets in the bags we got from Jet Rag that they could also use as pillows.

It's really amazing how the people take care of each other and make sure we don't miss any of their friends near by. There is one man that we have seen every week at the same bus stop and he ALWAYS takes an extra bag for his friend in the nearby parking lot. We wouldn't have been able to reach him otherwise because a fence separates him from the street.


The water has been a really important part of the lunches. I wish the bags were big enough to carry two bottles.

We are brainstorming ideas of possible ways that our supporters can contribute and/or help us expand Lunch Bunch so that we can reach more people. Some wonderful people from other cities and states have contacted us about starting their own Lunch Bunches in their town and we are completely thrilled and would love to see that happen. Others have donated water, clothing, and time to us and we are so thankful to have such kind and generous friends. We will keep you posted in the upcoming weeks about our progress!

LA's Homeless Blog

I've been following this blog for a while, its full of resources and info and keeps up with homeless-related news and happenings in LA and other cities. http://www.lahomelessblog.org/

Lunch Bunch - Week 4

The beautiful photos were taken by Ara Devejian

Lunch Bunch started off the day at 7:30 am, which is a miracle considering this is the day after the fourth of July. We went to Jet Rag, our donation drop off location.

While we waited, Mere found some nice jackets and sweaters at the $1 sale and I went across the street to the 99cent store to buy the remaining items for the lunches.

We ended up with a total of 0 donations, and 16 jackets from Jet Rag.

This weeks items.

We'd like to thank Ara, Jessica, Patricia, Amy, Marie, and Lourdes for their very generous donations this week. We've been able to more than double the number of meals we make in the past few weeks with your help! You guys have been so wonderful and supportive!

The sandwich factory.

We made 70 lunches this week!

Mere and Ana, the Lunch Bunch crew.

We started with our usual spots, in Hollywood first, then straight to downtown to the congested areas. The 70 lunches were passed out pretty quickly and everything went smoothly as usual except for a small incident towards the end of the trip where a couple of possible drug dealers tried to make it known that we were on their territory. They took two of our lunches, after parking their shiny convertible car in front of ours and getting in line with the homeless people awaiting their food. We weren't about to say no to drug dealers so we gave up the bags and bolted. One of them got a bit aggressive too. Some people have no hearts.

We spotted Jesus giving advice to Cat Woman.

Donation Drop-Off Location

Lunch Bunch will be parked at/near Jet Rag on Sunday July 5th, 8-10 am to accept clothing and food donations.

Look for the Lunch Bunch logo on our car. We will try our best to park as close to Jet Rag as possible.

Check our our craigslist listing for more info: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/wan/1251203909.html

Jet Rag
8-10am
825 N La Brea Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 939-0528

Look for this car:


We are accepting *CLEAN* and gently worn items such as:

Jackets
Sweaters
T-shirts
Pants
*Unopened packages of underwear are desperately needed.

Food Items needed:

Thick sliced bread (texas toast style)
Mustard
Whole fruit (bananas, apples, etc.)
Juice or water bottles
Individually packaged snacks (cookies, granola, nuts, crackers, chips, etc.)