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High School Students Are Delivering Groceries To LA Seniors For Free
Fruit display in a supermarket in Stillwater, OK. <A HREF="https://unsplash.com/photos/stpjHJGqZyw">gemma/Unsplash</a>
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A group of enterprising Los Angeles high school students are now delivering groceries to seniors and other people at high risk of coronavirus complications. They're doing it through Zoomers to Boomers, a free delivery service created by a Santa Barbara high school student.
The service has branched out and is now serving L.A.'s Hancock Park and Koreatown neighborhoods.
11th grade Marlborough School student Mira Kwon was feeling helpless and wanted to mobilize her Gen Z peers. So she launched the Los Angeles branch.
"I came up with this idea when I wanted to help my grandmother. I dropped off groceries in her house and I saw her other neighbors, who are also the same age as her, and I felt really bad because I wanted to help them as well, and they didn't have someone like me to be able to drop off food," Kwon says.
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She reached out to Zoomers to Boomers and brought the service to her area. Now, she hopes to branch out to greater Los Angeles.
To minimize contact, deliveries are left outside each client's home. No delivery fees or tips are required.
This isn't the only such service started by teens and young adults. Los Angeles sisters Leeat and Kayla Newman started a group called Shopping Helpers LA, which pairs a college-aged volunteer with a senior or someone who is immunocompromised to shop for and deliver their groceries.
"We decided, why not step up?" Kayla told CBS2. "It doesn’t have to be a big organization that does it. We can just start, two sisters at our house, making calls, spreading the word."
Shopping Helpers LA now has more than 300 volunteers who handle more than 100 requests per day, according to CBS2.
From Nevada to New Jersey, people around the United States have stepped up to launch similar programs.
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