Lasagna Love for Afghan Refugees

Sharing food is love and kindness in any language! I’m Eileen Scherzinger, a Regional Leader of over 150 incredible volunteers and a Lasagna Chef in the Northern VA area with Lasagna Love, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We feed families, spread kindness and strengthen communities. As an extension of this mission and as a way of showing our love, we have started cooking authentic Afghan food for newly arrived Afghan refugees to provide comfort and to welcome them to our community. In order to support our amazing project, we need your help to raise money to cover the cost of these meals!

I started volunteering with Lasagna Love almost 2 years ago, during the pandemic, to take my passion of feeding people while giving back to my community during trying times. When the Afghan refugees recently started arriving to Northern Virginia, I immediately saw the need to find a way to help feed them. This checked all the boxes of our mission, and I knew I could count on my volunteers to join me. It didn't take long to find the organizations and families to assist. Our first delivery was to feed 22 unaccompanied minors who were waiting to be reunited with their families.

A home cooked meal is more than dinner. It’s an expression of kindness and an opportunity to sit down to enjoy some comfort food. The feedback we often receive includes expressions of gratitude and surprise that people extend themselves to support a stranger. The gratitude is not one-sided. Our volunteer home chefs are equally fulfilled by the experience. I have heard from several of my volunteers that our initiative to feed the refugees has had many unintended consequences, including raised cultural awareness and having discussions with their children about why these families needed to leave their country, leaving everything behind.

As volunteers we spend our own money to buy ingredients, supplies to cook and use our own gas to deliver these meals. In addition to feeding Afghan families, we have also done numerous projects feeding teachers, first responders, homeless and hypothermia shelters. PLUS, we match dozens of families with volunteers every single week!!!

With the donations from this fundraiser, I would like to help my volunteers purchase ingredients to be able to support feeding more Afghan refugees who are settling in our area as well as any families who could use a little kindness with a homemade meal. I will be making kits with ingredients to distribute to volunteers who sign up to feed others in our community and during the holidays and winter months, the need is even greater. Each $1,500 raised covers the cost to purchase ingredients for approximately 100 meals and my first goal is 100 meals .

We want to make this happen by Dec. 31, and every little bit helps! Please donate if you can! We could also use your help spreading the word about Lasagna Love and the impact we make in communities - so you can also support us by sharing it on your social media! We are grateful for your support and generosity. Stay tuned to this page for updates about how our fundraiser is going.

Let’s make something amazing happen together and THANK YOU so much for helping us spread the kindness! We are Lasagna Love and so much more!

Eileen