A number of years ago, I became involved with Bend Food Project, a local nonprofit started by a group of friends in 2015 to help ease hunger in our area. Modeled after similar projects around the country, the door-to-door food collection system is both simple and efficient. Donors buy an extra can or box of non-perishable food when they go shopping and place those in a green bag (in some other programs the bags are blue). The bag is picked up outside their front door every other month by neighborhood managers like me, who leave an empty one behind. The full bags are dropped off at the Bend Food Project collection site where volunteers are waiting to unload their cars, empty the bags, and sort all the food, which is used to stock to the local food pantry.

I love the simple, efficient approach that makes donating food to help ease hunger so easy. So, when the organization sent out an email asking for a volunteer to write profiles about volunteers who were doing even more to help out, I jumped. Below you’ll find one of the profiles I wrote up. I hope this inspires you as much as it does me.

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“So many people are less fortunate than us,” says Wayan Larsen. For her, that’s enough of a reason to help ease hunger.

As a child, she foraged in the jungle of her native Bali, Indonesia, and relied on friends and neighbors for meals since her parents both worked. “We survived with what surrounded us,” she says.

These days, she feeds her neighbors along with others in and around Bend, which she and her husband have called home since 2005.

It all started with her garden. Although she had grown food in their first Bend house, when the couple moved to a place with more land and more sun in the fall of 2018, she got serious. She started to carve out a garden the following spring. “I wanted to see if things would naturally grow,” she recalls. “So, I dug the bare dirt and brought new soil to mix in.”

Then she started planting whatever she could think of, including carrots, tons of tomatoes, peppers, parsley, berries, herbs, beets, lettuce, spinach, kale and bok choy. “Everything I put in the garden in the soil, it just flourished. The love I got from Mother Earth was a blessing.”

Despite the abundance, Wayan outgrew her backyard, especially since she kept planting new crops like rhubarb. So, she spread out to the side road, which is now filled with berries.

She planted so much, she could not keep it all. Not even close. So, that first year, she put out a table and three cans, which she filled with the yield from her garden. When nobody took anything, she left bags of fresh produce on her neighbors’ and friends’ doorsteps. And she kept gardening mornings and evenings—spending five to twelve hours a day, which she continues to do even though she now works full time.

“Do you think Bend Food Project would take fresh produce?” she asked a friend when the harvest threatened to overwhelm her. The community-oriented 54-year-old had started donating non-perishable food to the organization in 2018 after hearing a radio commercial about the nonprofit’s efforts to ease hunger. “[Filling a green bag every other month] was a very easy way to give,” she recalls.

When she realized that Bend Food Project wasn’t in a position to accept fresh food, she decided to ask for donations from the people benefitting from her free produce. To entice her neighbors to help themselves, she revamped her outdoor display in 2020, piling the vegetables, fruits, and herbs like in a farmer’s market or a store. She also added a donation bin, along with a professional sign, courtesy of her boss, which read: Your donation will benefit Bend Food Project.

Over the last four years, Wayan has raised $3,200 for Bend Food Project’s effort to ease hunger while feeding countless locals. “By helping others, others are willing to help us,” she says. “In my experience, everything in life goes in circles. If we’re together, we are strong.”