Dustin Wright, a father of three from Amherst County, started a fund-raiser on Facebook after reading news stories about communities around the country dealing with lunch debts. (Facebook)
For this month’s #BeBetter hero, we follow the journey of a fellow Marine who saw a wrong the simply needed to be right.
Scraping together the few dollars necessary to pay for a daily school lunch might not seem like an exuberant cost, but for many, it's a few dollars too much. Around 30 million American students qualify for free or reduced-cost school lunches through a federal program called the National School Lunch Program.
Dustin Wright created a fundraiser on Facebook with the initial goal of collecting $1,000 towards the negative lunch account balances at Amherst County High School.
"After reading several stories of kids having to put hot lunches back because they didn't have enough money on their cafeteria accounts I thought maybe we could raise some money for kids in similar situations in our area," Wright wrote on the "Cafeteria Accounts for Local Schools" fundraiser page.
According to ABC News Lynchburg affiliate WSET, Wright contacted the high school and learned there was a balance of more than $4,000 in negative accounts.
Facebook fundraiser for Dustin Wright’s campaign to pay of student lunch debt
The former Marine and father of three said a school staff member told him that the high school was most in need, and "depending on how well this goes, we can focus on the middle and elementary schools after."
"Children should not be worried about their account balances; they just need to focus on school and getting food to feed their growing minds and bodies," he wrote. "Thank you in advance for any donations." Regardless of a student's balance, Amherst County Public Schools did note that they can still receive a hot meal.
Less than a week after the fundraiser began, Wright raised $7,676 from 256 separate donors.
Wright shared the payment details about how the donations were being processed to avoid fees and to be transparent in a post on Facebook. He also said he received cash donations and personal checks, which he added into a Navy Federal bank account and transferred the value into the fundraiser.
For Wright, the fundraiser was an unexpected success. With the donation window officially closed, Wright typed out his gratitude to supporters in a personal Facebook post.
"My biggest regret of this whole fundraiser is that I didn't write down all of the names of the people who donated to actually make it all possible," Wright wrote."THANK YOU everyone who participated in the fundraiser with me whether that was donating, sharing the post or just messaging me with approvement and encouragement."
With stories of schools serving cold sandwiches instead of hot meals to students with lunchroom debt and even threatening parents with placing children in foster care unless they settled up their bills, Dustin’s story shows us all the importance of taking action. Instead of just sitting back and expecting the problem to “work itself out”, he lead the charge against an injustice with the help of those in his community who clearly supported his efforts.
Here’s you to Dustin, doing exactly what a Marine should do to make the world a better place.