How Ryan Trahan Fed America
You may think to yourself, “How can someone feed all of America?” To answer your question, as much as we would all love to end hunger in America, it can be nearly impossible to accomplish. However, there are some great organizations out there such as Meals on Wheels, No Kid Hungry, and Feeding America to help towards the cause. What can we do from our end? Use the resources we have, spread the message, and donate in order to change the lives of as many people as we possibly can. This is exactly what Ryan Trahan did.
Ryan Trahan is a 24-year-old influencer who primarily creates content on YouTube. In 2021, he started The Penny Challenge where he tries to survive a certain period of time with only one penny. He first starts off his challenge by trading his penny for an item. He then trades that item for another item or tries to sell it for money and continues to find creative money-making strategies to multiply his penny and earn more money.
This summer, he decided to take The Penny Challenge to the next level by extending it to a whole month. Ryan was determined to travel across the country from California to North Carolina in one month to deliver a penny to fellow YouTuber, Mr. Beast, all while only surviving and making profit from the single penny he started with. If I’m being completely honest, the series is quite entertaining. He has a charming, yet awkward personality and it’s great to see him interact with complete strangers and survive on his own. However, the best part about The Penny Challenge is the meaning behind it.
During all of his videos Ryan has created a fundraiser to support Feeding America. Feeding America is a non-profit organization that focuses on feeding families nationwide. In 2021, Forbes named Feeding America the second largest non-profit charity in the United States. Ryan wanted to work towards feeding families in need in America and found a clever way to incorporate charity into his highly entertaining series. Throughout his series, Ryan created incentives for individuals who donated. For every $1,000 someone donates, Ryan includes their name at the end of his videos. For every $5,000 the individual gets a verbal shoutout in one of the videos. For every $50,000, Ryan is reset back to a penny, so no matter how many earnings he has raised on his own, he is required to restart from a penny and create more money making methods to continue his journey in delivering a penny to Mr. Beast. Lastly, for every $100,000 someone donates, Ryan gets a tattoo of anything the person that donated wants.
Ryan’s penny series gained over 240 million views combined and he was able to raise approximately $1.4 million dollars for Feeding America. This means that over 14 million people in America were able to have a meal. That is insane! Ryan’s series was known to change the YouTube game. Something about his personality and him documenting his journey while supporting a great cause felt like a breath of fresh air and many say that his series is exactly what YouTube needed. Not only was he able to get across to many audiences and create a community of viewers, he was able to reach many celebrities and influencers who wanted to donate big amounts and create something similar of their own. In fact, YouTubers Brooklyn and Bailey created their own series inspired by Ryan’s to end period poverty. It’s amazing to see how a single YouTuber with a strong platform has been able to make a change, entertain so many people, and most importantly, feed 14 million people. This proves to show that just a little bit of creativity can go a long way and that is how Ryan Trahan fed America.
