HATE IS A TOUGH SELL IN AMERICA:

Jeffrey Lew, who was born and raised in Seattle and works in a local government agency there, first learned about the issue with children across the country who can't pay for their school lunches when he read an article about it online. He discovered that when children don't have cash or funds to pay for their school lunches, schools begin to track their debt, and invoices are sent to their families. But many schools will also take lunches away from children who can't pay, or they trade out the hot lunch for an alternative cold lunch for those children. The practice has been dubbed "school lunch shaming."

Lew, who has two sons ages 9 and 4 and a 2-year-old daughter, was deeply affected by the article.

"It's devastating! It boggles my mind that a child can accrue a debt at school," he told TODAY Parents. "I was determined to do something about it."

Lew started by finding out the lunch debt at his own son's school: $97.10. He paid that off, but then he decided that wasn't enough. "I thought, why not help out the whole Seattle Public Schools district? It took off from there," said Lew.

In May, Lew created a Go Fund Me campaign to attempt to pay off all the school lunch debt in Seattle Public Schools, which was no small feat -- The lunch debt in Seattle Public Schools at that time was $20,531.79. But Lew met his fundraising goal of $50,000 and then some, so then he decided to do the same for the surrounding school districts in Tacoma, Spokane, Renton, and Clover Park. He has now paid off over $100,000 worth of debt in the five school districts.

"This issue is important to me because I really feel passionate about helping students just do their best in school and not have to worry about having food to eat," said Lew.

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