You launched a GoFundMe campaign to help pay off school lunch debt—and it went viral! How did it get started?
It all started with a video about lunch-shaming that I saw posted on Facebook. The video featured some severe lunch-shaming practices, like throwing out perfectly good food because a student couldn’t pay for it, stamping students on their arm or hand to say they owe money, and the outright denial of food. It was heartbreaking to hear about. We have a third grader in public school, and just thinking about our child being lunch-shamed made me ache for the children who actually do get lunch-shamed. I wanted to do something about it. First, I called my son’s elementary school to find out what its total lunch debt was. Then I thought, “Hey, let’s see what the whole Seattle school district debt total is. Maybe the community and other parents would want to help!” So I started the GoFundMe campaign to include the whole district, and it just took off from there.