"The reaction really warms our hearts.” Meet the teens solving hunger, one slice at a time.

Aashrita Kaza and her brother Anish were volunteering at a local charity a couple of years ago when they noticed who was standing in line.

“Pizza For A Purpose” can be downloaded from the App Store to connect with and support communities near you.

Hey everyone, happy Sunday. Are you ready for some good news?

In honor of September being Hunger Action Month, today’s story starts with two kids volunteering at a Broward County food pantry in South Florida.

“When my brother and I were volunteering at local places, we noticed many families were in line for food. And it wasn’t just adults, there were also many other young children our age and it just shocked us because we didn’t think there were kids our age who needed food,” said Aashrita Kaza, co-founder of the app “Pizza For A Purpose” alongside her brother, Anish.

Aashrita and Anish identified a real need. Feeding America estimates that roughly 14 million children across this country live in a food-insecure household right now. That’s 14 million kids who go to school, sit in a classroom, and try to learn on an empty stomach in the richest country on earth. For many of these children, it is possible that their only meal that day will come from one provided by the school itself.

Most of us have had moments like Aashrita and Anish where we have seen homelessness, hunger, or a family counting out change at the register. Things that shouldn’t be happening here, or anywhere. We feel the frustration, but then life goes on. Sometimes, the problems just feel too big for any one of us to tackle alone.

But Aashrita and Anish decided to step up anyway.

Using their interest in software development, they built an app with a simple idea: you pick a pizza place, grocery store, or another participating local business and additionally select a charity near you. The restaurant makes the pizza and delivers it straight to the charity, which then serves people in need. No warehouse, no middleman, no red tape. Just a direct line between somebody hungry and somebody with the means to help. They called it “Pizza For A Purpose,” and it’s sitting right now on the Apple App Store, built by an eighth grader and her brother.

Since launching the app two years ago, Aashrita and Anish have helped deliver more than 25,000 slices of pizza to families in Broward County and beyond. Twenty-five thousand slices. Aashrita is thirteen. She can’t even drive yet, and she and her brother are running something with more direct reach into their community than a lot of well-funded government programs manage.

“The reaction really warms our hearts,” Aashrita told CBS Miami. “Their faces just light up the second they get the pizza.”

But this isn’t only about scale. Every hot meal, delivered without a wait in line or a form to fill out is a small act of dignity. And that’s exactly what the people on the receiving end of this good work see in it.

Warren Lubow runs The Pantry of Broward which serves more than 600 people per month, many of them seniors living on fixed incomes. He told CBS Miami what the partnership means to his community.

“It’s just a blessing, I mean the smiles on their faces, it’s very rewarding. Whether it’s a grandparent being able to take it home to their grandkids or whether it’s just a senior who having a pizza for dinner is a luxury item,” he noted.

These powerful slices of pizza are the kind of small comfort that’s easy to take for granted until you don’t have it.

During my time in Congress, I sat through countless hearings on food insecurity. Smart people, good data, and real debate about programs, funding, and initiatives. Those debates matter. They shape policy for millions of people, and I’d never tell you otherwise. But while a lot of us in Washington were arguing about the right way to solve this at thirty-thousand feet, two teenagers in Broward County looked at a problem up close, built something themselves, and started solving it that same year.

There are people in this country who make a living telling us to be afraid of each other, to assume the worst about our neighbors, and to treat every disagreement like a reason for distrust. I’d rather point to Aashrita and Anish. Two kids who saw something wrong, didn’t wait for permission or a committee hearing, and just started fixing it, one slice at a time. That instinct to notice a stranger’s hunger and treat it as your own problem to solve is about as good a definition of being an American as I can give you.

You don’t have to be a coder or a teenager to do something like this. You just have to notice the kid standing in line, the way Aashrita and Anish did, and decide it’s your time to do something about it.

That, my friends, is good news for your Sunday. Enjoy the rest of your Labor Day weekend!

— Adam