OAKLAND — While politicians debate how best to solve the homeless crisis, some self-described misfit volunteers are spending their own money doing what they can to help.

“We are a guerrilla not-for-profit organization providing food and other necessities to people experiencing homelessness in West Oakland,” reads a flier posted by Punks With Lunch.

“We embrace a harm-reduction philosophy and meet people where they are without judgment.”

Alejandra Del Pinal, a San Francisco Homeless Youth Alliance employee, began making lunches in 2015 to give away at homeless encampments near her West Oakland home.

Now, as West Oakland Punks With Lunch, up to a dozen or more volunteers gather at her shared home every Sunday to assemble 80 to 180 healthy meals of sandwiches, fresh fruit, water and snacks, then head out to encampments at 35th and Peralta streets at 3:30 p.m. and Fifth and Brush streets at 4:30 p.m. to distribute them.

“We don’t get regular donations of food, but sometimes someone will drop something off,” said Del Pinal, 27. She estimated she spends about $100 weekly at Grocery Outlet.

Some volunteers prepare food, some distribute or provide a vehicle, some do everything, said volunteer Ryan Dal Porto, whose background is in homeless outreach and harm reduction work.

Besides providing meals, the loosely knit group has expanded its giveaways to include hygiene products, blankets, clothing and whatever else it can come up with to make life easier for homeless or impoverished West Oakland neighbors.

In early June, it teamed up with Dal Porto’s new Community Outreach Harm Reduction Team to add needle exchange and discarded syringe cleanup, human immunodeficiency awareness work, condom handout, distribution of the anti-overdose product Narcan (naloxone) and training in how to use it.

Punks With Lunch and Dal Porto’s organization added a weekly event from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays at Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. from 36th to 37th streets that focuses on Narcan training and distribution and syringe distribution and collection, but includes snacks, too.

Every other Saturday afternoon, volunteers gather at the Starline Social Club on West Grand Avenue for a three-hour community cleanup. On June 3, they collected 700 syringes. Dal Porto said they hope to expand this program, too.

As part of that, volunteers in vehicles also cruise the streets from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Northgate Avenue, from West Grand Avenue up to 27th Street, Dal Porto said.

Since Community Outreach Harm Reduction Team started, it has retrieved more than 4,000 discarded syringes off the streets and provided more than 50 doses of Narcan, either as refills or to people just trained in its use, Dal Porto said.

Narcan, which can be as simple to administer as a nasal spray, is effective in stopping the lethal effects of fentanyl, the drug that killed Prince in 2016. Fentanyl has been increasingly found in street drugs and is considered 50 times more powerful than heroin.

The volunteers “all pretty much met each other going to shows or are involved in the current punk scene: in bands, the DIY and artist community,” Del Pinal said. Some of the group members have experienced homelessness themselves, she added.

The hardest part of the work is seeing people slip through the cracks, she said. She related a story of how the group managed to get someone hospitalized who had called out from a tent, unable to walk, with two broken legs and infections.

They worked with a social worker to get her into a better situation, but, “we recently saw her back on the street,” Del Pinal said.

Punks With Lunch and Community Outreach Harm Reduction Team rely on donations for funding they do not provide personally. The Narcan is donated by the Harm Reduction Coalition, which oversees its distribution countywide through its HIV Education and Prevention Project of Alameda County and Overdose Prevention, Education Naxolone Distribution/Casa Segura programs. A crowdfunding site has provided a few thousand dollars this year. Punks With Lunch has benefited from underground concerts.

Notices of those and of the Sunday food-prep plans tend not to disclose the location, saying instead, “Ask a punk.”

Del Pinal said there is a benefit planned for mid-July at a West Oakland skate park known as the Tubes. Punks With Lunch volunteers can be found in the band Space Toilet, which includes several harm reduction workers, and the metal band Badr Bogu, she said.

As the group’s Facebook page reads in encouraging newcomers: “We are accepting of all people as long as you come with compassion, a non-judgmental attitude and a desire to learn and connect with our OaPunkland community.”

“The majority of long-term volunteers are punks,” Del Pinal said.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED

To donate to Punks With Lunch, go to www.crowdrise.com/help-fund-punks-with-lunch-for-2017/fundraiser/alejandranuncamas/contact_organizer.