Each month, Yahoo! For Good unleashes Purple Acts of Kindness to surprise and delight our local communities. In February, we brought extra cheer to hundreds of people in Los Angeles suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other devastating illnesses by partnering with Project Angel Food. We donated a few Valentine's surprises to accompany their deliveries of free and nutritious meals yesterday. Here's an account from their CEO.

By 8am, the Project Angel Food kitchen is already busy –- volunteers putting on aprons staff pulling fresh vegetables from the refrigerator, pre-heating the ovens, moving pots of water to the stoves. More than 1,500 meals will be cooked today for men, women and children struggling with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.

At 11:30am, the delivery volunteers start to arrive and exclaims of “Flowers!” fill the room as they notice the purple flowers from our friends at Yahoo!. “Do we get to take these to the clients?” they ask, knowing how much this thoughtful gift will mean to our clients. Everyone we serve faces a life-threatening illness and most also face tremendous loneliness. Any gesture of thoughtfulness, of remembrance, is magnified for the people Project Angel Food serves.

Well into the afternoon, bags of nutritious meals are loaded into cars with purple flowers peaking out, chocolate tucked inside and a card with Happy Valentine’s Day wishes from Yahoo!. These gestures of kindness, of thoughtfulness, will be remembered for months to come –- and beautifully represent Project Angel Food’s motto of “for Life, for Love, for as long as it takes.”

Margaret Steele
Chief Executive Officer
Project Angel Food