Below is a journal entry from the second time I volunteered with the local non-profit Reno Burrito Project. After small beginnings, it has become a community network devoted to distributing food and resources to the houseless population in Reno, dispersing 500 burritos to those in need every other Sunday. This entry will act as documentation of where I started in this whole journey of attempting to define what it means to ethically give back, connect with my community, and be a good person without having to give up space in my own life for coping and growing.
Reno Burrito Project is very intentional with one of the words in their brand name: project. It means a mission, aim, or purpose accomplished through the collaboration of a network of people. While a project can be started with one pair of hands, it can make waves with a couple dozen more.
Projects take time, they take commitment, and they also take belief. To offer part of yourself from start to finish means you have faith in its end result. So imagine what type of impact would happen if we made helping our fellow human beings a project? Consider the difference between the wave one person makes, versus ten or twenty. Consider how our lives and surroundings would change if we had an entire community of people committing and believing in their fellow human beings.
Starting higher education was a choice that took a lot of sacrifice. I almost anticipated myself suddenly taking the one class that would make me want to drop out of college or give up on all the work I had done so far. Especially being the first person in my family to pursue higher education, the daunting statistics created a web of anxiety I had to pierce through before I could even begin to picture success. But weirdly enough…that moment, that dreaded class, never happened.
The more I learned about the ethics, purpose, and power of journalism, the more drawn in I was. The deeper I immersed myself, the more I knew I had found passion within passion within passion in a field contingent on sharing human experiences and forming connections. I instantly began to understand that journalism isn’t just about being a conduit to the people for news and their sense of awareness- even though that’s a big part of it. I learned that journalism is also about bearing witness. Not just to the big, fantastical things in life that have fifteen other reporters there; but to the moments that people in our own community experience each day they live their life.
I will admit, I’m not sure if live or survive is the better word to use there…
Journalism is about making people feel seen. Feel heard. Feel valued. In a modern pandemic of loneliness, the simple act of not just seeing someone, but seeing someone, can go a long way. So, when I met a person who created an organization for exactly that: seeing, valuing, even loving people for the sake of being people, it was honestly the most fulfilling opportunity I had experienced in my adult life.
I’m also a person that is all about listening to your gut. As I am an individual who tends to pit their body against their mind, the part I trust most within myself is my intuition. And sometimes you meet someone that you honestly feel like [they] can completely transform your life. I was blown away that from day one, one person and their organization could make me feel that way.
Blaize created the Reno Burrito Project in 2020. It started with just him, and four burritos. Even with their first group of people, the Reno Burrito Project team was only able to roll and distribute fifteen burritos to unsheltered community members in Reno. The organization now rolls and distributes three to five hundred burritos every other Sunday.
Let’s look at the mission of Reno Burrito Project. It’s astounding that in such a short period of time, I feel like I have stumbled upon the path that may change my life.
I personally believe that right now is a pretty pivotal time in the social and environmental climate. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t cause me anxiety; I feel like I’m working forty hours a week to survive and not to live. It’s difficult to plan for and aspire for an uncertain future.
So really, truthfully, honestly, it’s difficult for me to feel like I’m operating with purpose all the time. And you might be able to relate to that.
But the thing about Blaize, is that he’s likely seen just as much tragedy as I have; he knows the heights of human selfishness and has acted witness to the poverty, sadness, and loss in our own town.
But despite knowing the heights of human evil, that does not deter him from working towards the heights of human compassion. I’ve never met a person with such an all encompassing devotion to people; loving them, seeing the best in them, offering constant space to improve- all while maintaining the balance in his own life to have space for personal enjoyment and care. Hope can be hard to come by, so when you meet someone who isn’t just hopeful, but spreads hope in a contagious way, it’s something you don’t let go of.
Let’s talk about what the day looked like.
It started with rolling the burritos; the space we were making the burritos in was donated, as was all the meat, beans, tortillas and rice. The people rolling the burritos were all volunteers, as were the people who cooked the food beforehand (ya know, outside of the insane amount of food Blaize himself cooks).
I was surrounded by people who virtually had no common ground with me- opposite majors, different ages, different economic classes, but we were connected through one mutual thing: the desire to do and see better. We had rich conversations in an environment that not only allowed for thoughtful discussion but encouraged it.
Then, we loaded up wagons with burritos, water, clothes, and other donated pantry goods.
There wasn’t much structure to our process. If someone looked hungry- determined usually through the bearing of every item they own in shopping bags, carts, or boxes- we offered them food and water. If they wanted one or ten burritos, we let them take what they needed. If they were willing, we asked their names, had conversations, told them about our day and they told us about theirs.
While working our way down Virginia Street, I met Thomas, Michelle, Tyrese, Michael, AJ, Sam, Bethany, another Tyrese, Lindsey, Mickey and many more.
Today I looked into blue, brown, green, and hazel eyes and I saw stories and lifetimes and pain and loss. I saw joy and hope, but more often hunger. I saw relationships- mothers and daughters, boyfriends and girlfriends, best friends and only friends. These relationships made me ponder on the adaptability of community: it made me wonder how many of these relationships were formed on the streets and how many of them existed beforehand. Either way, one conclusion is that a sense of community can form anywhere, and the other meant that community can be sustained anywhere. It showed me that humans have a desire to take care of each other.
Today, I spoke and I listened. Then stopped and really listened. Today I saw person after person after person.
People spoke about their workweek, they spoke about the last time they ate. They laughed and showered us with thank yous and you’re awesomes and remembered our names when saying goodbye. I saw person after person after person.
As I had these conversations, these people didn’t lack anything that made them a person: they had names and families and favorite foods and loved warm food just as much as the rest of us do. The only thing that these people were missing were walls around them and a roof above their heads. It was the way they had to savor each bite of their burrito, because they had zero clue when they would be able to obtain their next.
The other thing I kept encountering, was the justification these people kept trying to make for why they were deserving of food. The jobs they worked, how they’ll pay it forward, why they were in their situation to begin with. But, every time, I found myself stopping them, insisting you don’t need a reason, take as much as you’d like. But, that also forced me to confront a little deeper each time that we live in a society where one has to prove their worth in order to be granted kindness.
Or really just to be granted decency.
I get bogged down with that thought, with the weight of the issue of poverty, houselessness, food insecurity- all of it. Yet I think the main takeaway from today wasn’t about showing me how much sadness exists out there, but instead the avenues for hope to blossom. But we have to choose to walk down that avenue in order to get there.
If we as humans can’t take care of our fellow humans purely for the sake of them being humans, then we’re losing out on the heights of human kindness we ourselves can reach when we work as a collective. We’ll never come near the change we can accomplish if we use our own limitations as a reason not to push ourselves to help others.
The purpose of this project, of any project, really, isn’t to say you should give despite the fact it may disadvantage you financially, emotionally, or professionally. The purpose is to motivate others to consider if they have space and time in their life, today, to do something for another person.
As Blaize reminded me, it’s not how largely you give, it’s about whether your generosity is proportionate with what you have. Of course, no person can determine how much space you have to give in your life besides you, but if you end up answering that question honestly, not only will you find room to offer kindness to those around you, but each day will become more gratifying because of it.
Let’s be honest- caring and having empathy for people is no easy task. It requires stepping further than just acknowledging when a situation sucks; it’s sharing the pain in the most honest way you can within the capacity of your own lived experiences; BUT when you are limited by that capacity, ask yourself why. Consider the loss of another person, and imagine that level of loss in your own life. Empathy forces you to confront the comfort that you've had the opportunity to live in. Empathy connects people on the basis of one thing: humanity. And if we work towards that level of empathy, maybe we will find our polarization, our divide with each other, much more obsolete.
This also reminds me of another thing Blaize had said to me- what’s wrong with doing something good to feel good about yourself? If you do something kind that uplifts another human, even if just for a moment, what’s wrong with sharing that act of kindness and potentially helping someone else pay it forward?
The space you provide in your life each day for empathy, is an opportunity to inspire those around you. If we, as a collective, begin to reframe our mentality to this perspective, our possibilities are boundless.
And maybe, as I live each day a little kinder, a little more open, a little more generous, I’ll see a change. Maybe, despite my gender or my sexuality or my income or my clothes or quite literally anything else that stops someone from connecting with me, I’ll see people.
I’ll see people and they’ll see a person back, every. single. time. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll change my life.