Meet the 15-year-old scout making lasagnas to feed KC, Wichita & Topeka
Mason Cooley, 15, a member of Troop 289 Spring Hill, has been planning his Eagle Scout project for six months, making and delivering lasagnas for families in need around Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita.
He saw that hundreds of requests that had been sitting on Lasagna Love, a global nonprofit that makes and delivers lasagna to families in need, for months because there weren’t enough volunteer chefs. He wanted to close the gap and create a project to earn his Eagle Scout rank.
Mason Cooley’s goal was to make 500 lasagnas over three of what he calls build days, when he and volunteers assembled the lasagnas, spread across four months. On Saturday, he and a group of volunteers he led completed 514.
“For January, we had to fundraise $2,500, and during each (lasagna assembly day) you can continue fundraising, so that way you have enough funds,” Mason Cooley said. “In total, we’ve raised $10,301.”
Mason’s parents, Nick and Sara Cooley, found Lasagna Love during the pandemic. The two had lost their jobs and received so much love from the community in the form of home-cooked meals, that they made a promise to give back. What started as a commitment to make one lasagna a week quickly expanded into a way to include scouts who wanted to do community service.
“When he came to me in September of last year and said, I want to do Lasagna Love as my project, and I want to clear the backlog of Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City, my instinct was, ‘you’re crazy, how do you even begin to pull this off?’” said his mother, Sara Cooley, 43.
Local leader for Lasagna Love, Teresa Ellis, 58, was at the final build day Saturday morning at Lenexa United Methodist Church, 9138 Caenen Lake Road, to help coordinate with local volunteers to deliver the meals. The nonprofit, she said, is no questions asked. You can either nominate someone for a meal, or request one yourself.
“If you ask for a meal, you get a meal,” she said.
The prepared dishes went homes in the Kansas City area, as well as Topeka and Wichita and nonprofits like Synergy Services, Healing House and New House.
On Sunday, the Cooleys took 50 pans of lasagna to Emporia to meet with a volunteer from Wichita, and in the afternoon another volunteer from Topeka came to KC to pick up more.
“I’m proud of the man he’s turning into,” Sara Cooley said. “You never know where these things lead, but the amount of hours that he has wrapped up into this thing, he knows he’s making an impact.”
Before this past weekend, the cost to make one lasagna was around $25, according to Mason’s father Nick Cooley, 43.
“He’s done a phenomenal job of haggling stores, so to speak, and buying stuff in bulk. I think he’s got it down to just under $17 a lasagna.”
Mason Cooley comes from a family of scouts. Both his sister and his father built physical items for their final project: His sister made benches, and his dad made an outdoor classroom.
“He’s touched more lives doing this with the ripple effect than my outdoor classroom,” Nick Cooley said.
Mason Cooley had to complete 21 merit badges to get to this final project. Now that he’s completed it, he has to fill out a work book before appearing in front of the board of review. After becoming an Eagle Scout, Mason Cooley plans to return to his troop as a leader and continue finding ways to give back.
“My dad likes to say when people get their Eagle, one ask is that they help someone else get their Eagle Scout,” Mason Cooley said.
“I tell him the sky’s the limit. He’s gonna be able to do whatever he wants in life,” Nick Cooley said. “And hopefully, when this is all said and done, he can have an Eagle Scout on that resume.”
Information on how to volunteer to deliver or make meals for Lasagna Love can be found on their website.
