Peanut Butter Plan

Yesterday I decided to join a new movement: The Peanut Butter Plan. The story, in a nutshell: A young man in San Francisco saw hungry people around him and decided to do something about it. So he got some friends together and made sandwiches to pass out to those hungry people. The PBP is spreading across the country. People who join pledge to make and hand out sandwiches at least once a month. I am the point person for Denton and am trying to get more of my friends to join and to start PBP's in their own cities.

This post strikes me as slightly ironic for two reasons:

1) I myself am not allowed to eat peanut butter or jelly and am discouraged from eating much bread, but I will be making large quantities of them to give to other people. It seems like I will be leading myself into the path of temptation. On the bright side though, I do have some peanut butter and jelly I can no longer consume myself so I can put it to very good use.

2)I just posted a blog about how I needed to relax more and learn to tell people know. I said I need to learn to let other people do things for me because I don't have the energy to do a lot myself.

The thing is, what I lack in energy I make up for in compassion (and in time, for that matter). And this thing is so simple yet so important that I can't not do it. It will only take about $10 in supplies, an hour of preparation and half an hour of handing out food (and interacting with people I normally wouldn't be in touch with) to make a difference in people's lives. I may not be able to provide all the meals they need, but I will at least make sure they have an extra meal one weekend a month. And I hope to eventually gather enough volunteers to have sandwich weekends every week.

At first I will probably go around passing out food on Sundays. I am going to do more research, but from what I learned writing stories about the local homeless a couple of years ago that's when they have the most trouble finding food. But it could spread to an entire weekend, then to every weekend. But this small first step will be enough to at least ensure that I am making some direct impact on the local homeless community. In Denton, the homeless are often ignored and I want them to know that people care about them.

On a selfish level, I think helping people will also help me. It will make me feel like I am making a difference in people's lives (my main goal as a journalist) and that will help me to relax and be happy. And I think every volunteer gets something back from it. Making other people happy makes you happy too. It's just the way it works. It's never the main objective of volunteering, but it's the best byproduct.

If you would like to help with my Peanut Butter Plan, or perhaps start one in your city, contact me or go to Peanut Butter Plan. I believe you need a facebook account to look at the group. All credit for this idea goes to Jory John of San Francisco. He's inspirational.