This is an idea. A plan. A peanut butter plan.

The concept is simple, but immediate. Even if just for a little while, we’re trying to alleviate hunger. It all counts.

Here’s how it works:

The first of every month is peanut butter & jelly day. Put that on your calendar. If the first doesn’t work, pick a day that does. You’re welcome to have more than one peanut butter & jelly day per month. Just not fewer than one. That’s what you’re agreeing to, by joining this group: that you, personally, will take a half hour per month and pass out some sandwiches to some hungry people.

Here’s the plan:

1. Buy a couple loaves of bread and peanut butter and jelly. It shouldn’t cost you more than about $10.

2. Make as many peanut butter & jelly sandwiches as you can afford with both money and time and bread. Say, between 10 and 50. Put them in a bag.

3. Go somewhere where people are hungry. All cities (and most non-cities) have easy places to find. In San Francisco, it might be the Mission District. Or the Tenderloin. Or next to a BART station. In other cities, other areas. You can find them. You’ve passed through them. (I’ve basically just been walking down Market Street in San Francisco until I exhaust my sandwich supply … and then I turn around and walk home.)

4. Pass out all of your sandwiches. Ideally, you’re giving out one sandwich per person to maximize the number of people who get fed.

5. Send me a note, via this page, and let me know how many you managed to pass out and I’ll add it to the recent news section. If we can get 10,000 people to pass out 10 sandwiches a month, that’s 100,000 people who have been able to eat an additional meal.

6. Repeat next month. (Or sooner.)

Reactions will be mixed, of course. Some people will thank you. Some may ask for money. And some may take a pass on the sandwich, completely. Reactions will be all over the place and random and that’s fine.

Invite everybody you know to join the Peanut Butter Plan and let’s grow this thing and feed some people. These are small actions, yes, essentially. I know this. But they will (ultimately) be small actions multiplied by 10,000 people multiplied by thousands and thousands of sandwiches distributed every month. This will be the definition of small actions making a big impact all over the place. It will work.

In the coming weeks, I’ll post more about my experiences, here, and I would encourage you to send me your stories, as well … or just post them on the wall of the Facebook group.

Thank you in advance,

Jory John, Peanut Butter Plan Founder