Not one sandwich, but two. And to go with them, two packets of chips and two cartons of yoghurt.

For several months, Josette Duran packed her son two lunches to take to school. She assumed her son, Dylan, was just hungry; she then discovered he was taking one of them for a friend who had nothing to eat himself.

“I’m telling you this is not for praise, but it’s pretty intense,” she said in a Facebook Live post. “He said, ‘No, Mum. It’s for this little boy at school, and he sits by himself, and all he eats is a fruit cup’.”

Ms Duran said she had once been homeless and forced to live out of a car (WFNY News)

According to WFNY News, the headteacher of the school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, called Ms Duran into the office after the other boy’s mother found out about the lunch.

“She says, ‘I know this isn’t much, but I just got a job, and I know you've been feeding my son’,” Ms Duran said. She said she could not accept the money the woman offered her.

The girls’ volleyball team Ms Duran coaches also raised more than $400 to pay her back, but instead she took that money to the cafeteria.

“We paid up all the past due accounts for all the kids who need lunch,” she said. “So now, nobody in that school owes any money, and now everyone can eat.”

Ms Duran said she felt compelled to act because she had once been in hard times herself.