Lasagna Love, an international group whose local chapters provide meals to others as an act of community care and benevolence, needs more volunteers, said Carla Jo Martin, local leader for Lasagna Love in Rutherford County and Cannon County.

Lasagna Love is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit group launched by a mom in 2020, during the first wave of the Covid pandemic. Rhiannon Menn baked and delivered pans of lasagna to her neighbors, her generosity inspiring a viral grassroots campaign that swept throughout the nation.

The group has grown to include more than 52,000 volunteers from all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Australia and Canada with the mission to feed families, spread kindness and strengthen communities.

Local Lasagna Love Leader Carla Jo Martin with State Regional Director Melanie Johnson (left)

“Currently in Rutherford County, we only have about 20 volunteers, and we have 15 to 20 families waiting each week that aren’t matched with someone,” Martin said. “A person that wants to volunteer signs up on our website, and they determine how much they want to do, how often they want to do it, and how far they are willing to drive.

“A family goes into our website and requests a lasagna. At that point, the computer runs an optimizer that matches up the volunteer with a family in their community that has requested the meal.”

The volunteer purchases the groceries, prepares the meal and delivers it. Lasagna always has to be an option that the volunteer can make, but the volunteer might also say, for instance, that they can prepare lasagna, chicken spaghetti or some kind of soup. It just needs to be something hearty, Martin said.

“Lasagna Love exists to deliver comfort where we experience it most often—our family dining table—and to prove that even small displays of kindness can have profound and lasting impact,” said founder Rhiannon Menn.

“Our mission is not only to help address the rise in food insecurity, but to also provide a simple act of love and kindness during a time of uncertainty and stress, and reduce stigmas associated with people asking for help when they need it the most. Lasagna Love accomplishes this by creating an easy and accessible way for every person to help a neighbor in need the way that is comfortable and meaningful for them,” the founder added.

Volunteers prepare lasagnas and deliver them to the doorstep of local families who have requested a meal. Families can privately sign up to request a meal with no questions asked. Once a family is matched with a volunteer, the volunteer coordinates preparation using the contact information provided, and then schedules a day and time for delivery of the meal.

“The lasagnas are for anybody,” Martin said. “Single-parent households; we have delivered to the unhoused, families that are dealing with medical issues—just people that need a little TLC in the form of a meal.

“There are no requirements. Our requirement is no judgment,” she said.

It doesn’t matter who requested or why they requested. Lasagna Love just tries to fill as many requests as possible.

“The majority of the requests we get are from low-income families, elderly who can’t get out or can’t prepare meals anymore. And it is a wide variety of people who would like a meal that might include someone who lives in a $500,000 house and just had a baby. There is no requirement to what you need to do, or what you need to be, or how much you make,” the area leader continued.

Martin says Lasagna Love has delivered 430,000 lasagnas feeding an estimated 1.8 million people. In Rutherford County in 2023, volunteers fed 1,205 individuals within 291 families.

“We could do a whole lot more if we have more volunteers,” she said. “There are some areas that have problems finding people that need help, but Rutherford County is not one of those places.”

Volunteers complete a brief online training associated with safe food preparation, and they share how they wish to participate. Then they participate as much or as little as desired—whether only one time, weekly, monthly or otherwise.

Volunteers can sign up at lasagnalove.org/volunteer; those who would like to request a meal can do that at lasagnalove.org/request.