Child Notices Classmate Has No Lunch, Packs An Extra One For Months

Mom packs lunch for son’s friend so he doesn’t have to go without

A New Mexico mom packed an extra lunch for weeks for her son’s friend when she found out the little boy didn’t have a full meal every day.

Josette Duran assumed her growing boy was just hungry when he asked her to pack more lunch supplies. She soon found out that her son had befriended a child who desperately needed an adult’s help. “He said, ‘No, Mom. It’s for this little boy at school, and he sits by himself, and all he eats is a fruit cup,'” Duran told KCCI News. She found out the kid’s mom had lost her job and couldn’t afford to pay for school lunches. Duran felt motivated to help the single mom. “This hits home to me because a few years ago, me and my son were homeless,” she explained. “I was living in my car and I was washing him in bathrooms. And we didn’t have food.”

Duran shared photos, like the one above, of the lunches she packed on Facebook. It’s unclear why the child wasn’t given free lunch at school since there are programs in place to help kids in these situations. It’s also saddening that none of the adults who monitor the kids’ lunches noticed that a young boy was only eating a fruit cup every day. Eventually, she was called into the principal’s office because the unnamed child told his mom about the nice woman who packed an extra lunch for him since the beginning of the school year. “She says, ‘I know this isn’t much, but I just got a job, and I know you’ve been feeding my son,'” Duran shared. But having been in her shoes, the mom couldn’t accept the single mom’s money.

It’s amazing that it took an 11-year-old to notice a child was only eating a fruit cup for weeks. This is why we teach kindness. This is why we teach compassion. You never know what kinds of circumstances are going to fly under the radar. No kid should go hungry for one meal – let alone several.

After the emotional meeting with the school’s principal, Duran posted a Facebook live video that KCCI News captured. In it she talked about how she was rewarded for her act of kindness. “I have friends, and I’m doing better in school, and you have a great son, and he’s my best friend,” she reported. Duran’s also a girls volleyball coach, and when her team learned of her helping hand, they raised more than $400 to pay her back. The kind mom took it straight to the school cafeteria instead.

“We paid up all the past due accounts for all the kids who need lunch,” she explained in her video after she choked back tears. “So now, nobody in that school owes any money, and now everyone can eat.”

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