With over 46,000 people experiencing homelessness in LA, one organization is making a difference – one burrito at a time.

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By Madison Weil

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After an inspiring trip back to his home country, India, Ravi Singh felt it was his duty to help feed the homeless population here in Los Angeles. “We live right in the middle of the homeless problem” he said, looking at me through delicate spectacles as we stood inside his food truck, preparing for a night on Skid Row. Underneath his black cotton cap, his eyes are earnest and soft, his long beard streaked with gray. He and his wife, Jacquelin Singh, are the founders of Share A Meal, a food truck serving over 800 free meals a week to LA’s homeless population.

Rolling up the sleeves of his worn, denim shirt, Singh explained he spent his childhood in India, then emigrated to the United States as a young man to attend USC, and now resides with his wife in Santa Monica. “We planned our trip to India in 2006 to satisfy our nine-year-old son’s spiritual curiosity and to begin exposing him to different faiths,” he said. Singh practices Sikh faith while his wife identifies as Christian. While travelling, they visited India’s famous Golden Temple and witnessed a model of service so moving, it changed their lives forever.

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“The Golden Temple is the spiritual nerve center of Sikh faith,” Singh said. “A main tenet of the services is having a community meal where volunteers cook and serve. And there they serve about 80,000 meals a day and on the weekends it’s about 160,000,” he said. Singh and his family were inspired by the Golden Temple’s impressive and effective model for mass feeding, and its ability to create an interfaith community of people working together to serve one another.

Singh said the Temple is built upon one essential principle: “Those from all directions and all faiths singing hymns to the One” and then after that, sharing a meal together to create a single peaceful community of all faiths.

Singh said this tradition has been going on for hundreds of years in India. “So when we were there and exposed to this beautiful spirit, and especially the interfaith concept behind it building up the local communities, we were inspired to take this beyond the Temple” he said.

As residents of Santa Monica, Singh and his wife observed LA’s homelessness crisis on a daily basis. “We knew how bad the homeless situation was and we wanted to serve the homeless community in our local areas. Through that contemplation came the idea: ‘Why not get a catering truck or a food truck and just serve the hard meals where they are?’” he said.

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The mobility of the food truck allows the organization to uniquely cater its services to people who might not otherwise get help. “[There are] shelters and stuff like that, but a lot of people don’t like to seek help. A lot of people need help given to them and I think that’s what this does,” said volunteer Fiona Sylvies.

Edward Perez, the driver of Share A Meal’s truck, also commented on the advantages of a mobile food truck. “It’s good that we can go to them instead of them coming to us. We make the food and drive up to them. We go to where they’re located so they don’t have to try and find us or look for us,” he said.

Before purchasing Share A Meal’s current food truck, however, Singh experimented by investing over $40,000 in a commercial kitchen trailer and ensuring it was FDA-approved. Singh and other volunteers originally cooked rice and beans in the trailer and then transported the food to different locations in LA in a van, often setting up tables and using catering boxes. However, the Share A Meal team soon encountered a problem with serving hot, steaming bowls.

“In time, we realized, especially at Skid Row, there was a little crisis of tuberculosis and so you couldn’t breathe. We were losing volunteers because we were always wearing masks. One day I was just standing there, and there was so much steam going around from the hot food and everybody breathing it even though we had masks. I knew [tuberculosis] would spread. So that’s where the burrito idea came from. So we started doing what we do now. We bought a truck. It’s been an evolution,” he said.

Now, the Share A Meal team has a regular Monday-Friday schedule, parking the truck at a different location each weeknight in areas where the homeless are concentrated (see interactive map below for weekly times and locations). In the first hour of each night, volunteers gather to prepare ingredients and roll hundreds of burritos. The burritos consist of rice, beans and a unique Indian paste made from tomatoes, ginger and garlic. Singh said this paste has been used for mass feeding in India for more than 400 years. “By keeping the burritos vegan, you can serve everyone. This is a survival food. You can store beans and rice for a long time, and the beans contain protein,” he said.

Where and when can you find Share A Meal?

Click on the food truck icons for the days, times and locations of Share A Meal's services.

Volunteers pack large bags full of water bottles, burritos and often other necessities such as blankets, toiletries or socks. In the second hour of each night, they walk up and down the surrounding streets, passing out the contents of their bags and kindly greeting the homeless. The intention is “to make the homeless feel humanized and keep their hopes and dreams alive,” Singh said.

Rebecca Hess, president of USC’s Share A Meal club, volunteers on Wednesdays and Fridays. She said the homeless are usually shocked to receive food, water and kindness from strangers. For her, getting to know the homeless people has been the most rewarding part of her experience with the non-profit. “I think the worst issue with homelessness is that people don’t see them as people. I think we see them as vermin or as nothing. We ignore them. You’re not going to stop to say hi to a homeless person. That’s just how society has made it. So with Share A Meal specifically it’s not just a soup kitchen where they come and line up and we just hand out food. We walk up to them and we say, ‘We see you, we’re saying hi and we’re giving you a free meal.’ It humanizes the experience for sure and that’s what makes Share A Meal so unique,” she said.

According to volunteer Alejandro Garcia, Share A Meal is working to rebuild trust between the homeless population and the LA community. “These people have often been forgotten. They’re considered ‘the invisible people’ or even now we call them ‘the homeless people’ when in reality, it’s not a thing to be. They’re just experiencing homelessness right now. And even the term ‘the homeless people’ is something we need to start moving away from,” he said.

Joseph Scott, who is currently experiencing homelessness himself, agrees that the city should try to view their homeless population in a different way. After being handed a warm burrito, Scott leaned back in his old battered leather chair — a part of his makeshift home on the side of an alley. “Well, homelessness starts on different levels. One moment you can be employed, and you can have a home or a residence that you are paying for and then something could just strike,” he said thoughtfully between bites. “A lot of people think if you’re homeless you’re probably a drug addict and that’s just not always true. You could have had things and mismanaged your money and then it ultimately lands you on the streets,” he said.

For Shannon Miller, a young and spirited volunteer sporting a large grin and a rainbow tie-dye bandana, Share A Meal has become an integral part of a social experiment. Miller was raised in Chicago, and decided last year to leave the comfort of his home to travel the country for five to six years and journal about what it’s like to experience homelessness in every major U.S. city. “A week after I got to LA, Share A Meal handed me a burrito” he said. “Then a week later I was on the other side of the burrito passing them out. I try to help as much as I can.”

Miller volunteers weekly with Share A Meal, and even attended a retreat hosted by Singh and his wife in the mountains where they grow and harvest some of their ingredients.

“I just want to show that people mean something. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re up here or if you’re down here,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “We’re all equal. It doesn’t matter if you live in a penthouse, if you work at McDonald’s, if you own a business or if you just live on the streets. We’re all equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re a white person or a black person, a Muslim person or a Christian person, it doesn’t matter; we’re all people,” he said.

Miller also teaches meditation to other homeless individuals he meets on the streets. “I teach meditation because it helps people get off of drugs. When you can meditate and truly become one with yourself [and the universe] it’s amazing. It’s a better high than any drug will get you,” he said.

Share A Meal now has nearly 600 volunteers in total, according to Singh. “It was me and Jackie in the beginning but we could not have lasted this long if all these volunteers hadn’t joined us,” he said. Singh originally thought the local Sikhs would be the only people wanting to volunteer, but quickly learned “the spirit of service is not limited to any one community,” he said, noting how diverse their volunteers are today.

Photogallery: Share A Meal in Action

You can find more photos by following @shareameal on Instagram.

While Singh invests a large amount of his own money in Share A Meal, the organization runs largely on donations and support from their volunteer base. Singh said each meal costs about $2 and they run a monthly deficit of $3,000. In order to make the volunteer-driven service sustainable and encourage growth, Singh welcomes donations and more volunteers on Share A Meal’s website .

USC’s Share A Meal Club is also hoping to get a work study program approved by the university that would enable the organization to sell food on or around campus to generate more revenue.

Having attended USC himself, Singh feels he’s been given many opportunities. “I’ve been gifted so much and blessed in this country. It’s my pride and joy being able to share,” he said.

Although Singh volunteers most of his nights serving the homeless, he believes he receives much more than he gives. “People like to call it we are giving, but I think we receive more. And what we receive is the touch of humanity we feel inside,” he said softly after we had concluded the nightly rounds through Skid Row. “Even after serving, although it’s supposed to be selfless, I feel selfish because I feel fulfilled. In the plastic world of money making and rat race that we live in, when you come and do this you feel human — and that’s what you receive.”

The Los Angeles City Council has invited all Share A Meal volunteers to the council chambers to recognize the service they provide on a daily basis.