School Lunch

Schools provide lunches to their students daily. School departments do their best to make sure that the lunches they serve are healthy. If a child brings their money for lunch, they get a lunch. Some students are eligible for free lunch. Some students aren’t eligible for free lunch, so they bring a lunch from home. When a child doesn’t have access to free lunch or a lunch from home, they go hungry. This is beyond heartbreaking.

Josette Duran

Josette Duran and her 14-year-old son, Dylan, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They didn’t always have it easy. A few years ago, she lost her job. Soon, she lost her apartment, and they were homeless. They were living in her car. She had to take Dylan to public bathrooms to wash him up, and they barely had any money for food. It was a very difficult time for the family, but Josette managed to turn things around. She finally found a job, and soon, she earned enough money to rent an apartment. She and her son finally had a place to live, and they also had enough money for food. Things were going really well for the family.

Making Lunch

Josette often made Dylan’s lunches for school. She ways that he preferred a home lunch over a school lunch, and it was affordable. One day, Dylan asked her to make him two lunches. At first, she didn’t think that this was odd. He was a growing boy and an athlete, so she assumed that he needed more food to stay full during the day. When he was asking for a second lunch every day, she decided to ask him why. She started to worry that maybe a bully was forcing him to bring a second lunch for him, so she had to ask. With bullying being such a big problem today, she wanted to ask just to be safe.

A Heartbreaking Reason

When a boy asked for two packed lunches, his mom was heartbroken when she found out why. Dylan told her that there was a little boy at school who always sat at lunch alone. He didn’t eat a school lunch. What he brought was barely a lunch at all. Each day, all he had was a fruit cup to eat. Dylan told Josette that he remembers how hard it was when they were struggling, and he didn’t want this little boy to struggle as he did. Josette says that her eyes filled with tears when her son told her about the little boy.

She was brokenhearted for this child, but she was proud beyond words of her son. The fact that he was willing to help a boy in need showed her that she was raising a good kid. After finding out the truth, she was more than happy to keep making two lunches for Dylan and the young boy.

The Young Boy’s Mother

When the young boy’s mother found out that Dylan was bringing her son a lunch every day, she wanted to reach out to Josette to thank her. The woman explained that she had lost her job, and her family was struggling. The mother told Josette that she had just found a new job, and she offered to pay her back for all of the lunches that Josette and Dylan provided for her son. Josette thanked the woman for the offer, but she didn’t need to worry about paying her back. She told her that she and Dylan had been in a similar situation, and she was happy to help.

Helping More

Josette thought about what she went through when Dylan was younger, and what this woman and her son were going through. It made Josette wonder how many more children were going hungry at lunch because their parents couldn’t afford to pay for their lunch. The idea of kids going hungry wasn’t acceptable to Josette, so she had an idea.

Paying Off Balances

Josette wanted to do what she could to help the students in her son’s school. She was the coach of a volleyball team, and after speaking with her team, they made a decision. Josette and the team all agreed that it was up to them to do something else to help, and they ended up raising $400 that they donated that money to pay off all of the outstanding lunch accounts for students in the school. This way, she could be sure that the children in the school could get a lunch, even if they previously had an outstanding balance. Josette believed that every child deserves to have enough to eat. If there were more people like Josette in this country, we wouldn’t have to worry about any student going hungry.