Compassion can be found in so many places. But it grows best when it starts early. When a young boy ran out of lunch money one day at school, he had a realization that so many his age don’t. He wondered what it must be like when kids do run out of money for food at school. Eight-year-old Keoni Ching, a second-grader at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Washington, couldn’t stop thinking about the idea that another kid might go hungry.
I almost ran out of lunch money and then I thought about other kids that would run out of lunch money very quickly,” he said.
Keoni knew he had to find a way to help. He told his mom, April Ching, about what it had felt like when he had no lunch money. “Even though I paid [his balance] 30 seconds later, that is something that has still affected him,” she said. “It gave me an understanding from a kid’s perspective how hard that is.” Keoni recalled his parents discussing an NFL player, Richard Sherman, who had donated $27,000 to pay off students’ lunch debt.
So he made a plan to raise money for his school. He began making kindness keychains that he sold for $5 each. The keychains are personalized with beads, spelling out whatever a person would like, from names to sports teams. He dubbed his plan, ‘Keychain Kindness’ because of a special event his school holds each year.
Eight-year-old Keoni Ching recently donated more than $4,000 to his school to help those who couldn’t afford their school lunches. Photo from the Ching family.
Keoni, with the help of his parents, younger brother and grandparents, has made more than 300 to date so far, his mom said. “I can’t even tell you how generous people have been,” she said. “One gentleman [whom the family did not know] donated $1,000.” “He just said that for an 8-year-old to want to do something so nice for other people and have it be nothing more than wanting to help his friends at school, that touched him,” she recalled.
Keoni presented his principal, Woody Howard, with a $4,015 check during the elementary school’s kindness week. His school will take a portion, and then the rest of the amount will be given out to the six schools in the district to help with their lunch debt, Howard told Good Morning America.
Eight-year-old Keoni Ching, here with his school’s principal Woody Howard, recently donated more than $4,000 to his school to help those who couldn’t afford their school lunches. Photo from the Ching family.
“The district [lunch] debt is about $140,000 for the entire district,” he said. “The reality is if a family falls behind and especially if they’ve got multiple kids, that debt can add up quickly and can really sneak up on you.” “I think the lesson here from Keoni is that when you see a need and then you go and address the need, people notice,” Howard added.
Up next for Keoni is to make and sell keychains, but this time for a local children’s hospital. “When you see the joy that your child is getting from giving to other people, there really is nothing better than that,” his mom said. “He doesn’t understand the magnitude of what he’s doing. He’s just helping.” Watch the inspiring video below.
Sources: Understanding Compassion | GMA
