My friend Bryson heard about the Charlotte project and decided to do something similar for his confirmation project at church. He and Robert Payne, one of the youth leaders, went around town on bikes giving burritos to the homeless and hungry one Saturday in May during our freshman year of high school. I thought it sounded like a great idea, and Bryson, some of the other youth, and I proposed making Burrito Bikers the main outreach project of our youth group. We approached the youth leaders with the idea during the summer. Each different level of the youth group would have a separate time to make burritos, which would be frozen. Then, at least one Saturday a month, the Senior EYC (high schoolers) would distribute the burritos to the homeless. The youth leaders also liked the idea, especially since it would be a long-term project with the possibility of making a large impact.
By this time, other people in Greensboro had started to do Burrito Bikers, using Center City Park as a focus point. They began to coordinate their efforts, scheduling different groups on different Saturdays as well as organizing people to bring coffee and doughnuts as well. Bryson and I contacted them about including the Holy Trinity youth group. We soon had an arrangement to bring the burritos on the first Saturday of every month during the school year.
Our first Saturday was October 8, 2011. Since then, the program has become one of our largest, with high participation from the youth and it has been going on strong for almost three years now. Bryson, I, and everyone who else organized it project never dreamed it would be this successful.
One of the things I have loved the most about the experience is that it gives a face to homelessness and poverty. Coming from a middle class neighborhood and family, those are two things I was not always exposed to. Its hard to connect with something you have never seen before.Its easy to vilify or ignore the homeless if you have never met them. But with Burrito Bikers, we are out in Greensboro interacting with the homeless, giving them food and hearing their stories. Poverty becomes real to us. Some of the stories I have heard are quite tragic. One homeless man I met used to be a college professor until an unfortunate set of circumstances ruined his life. Some of them are mentally ill that have fallen through the cracks of a faulty social system. Some days when we have left over burritos, we take them to a homeless camp on the south side of downtown where we can see how they live. Very few are homeless because they are lazy or don't want to work, as many politicians claim; they are simply the victims of a harsh life. It is extremely meaningful for me to try to help. I want to try to do something in the future to create lasting change for the homeless and impoverished; I don't think our country does enough to help. We are all connected to each other after all, living in a giant global family, and there is no higher purpose than working to make the world a better place.
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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| Making burritos |
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| March 2014 |
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| March 2013 |
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| Our first Saturday |
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