Humans of N.Y. blogger raises more than $1 million for students after story goes viral

Humans of N.Y. blogger raises more than $1 million for students after story goes viral

The story of a Brooklyn boy lavishing praise on his principal for pushing them to do better rather than punish them caused an outpouring of support to help her reach her goal of sending the kids on an annual visit to Harvard University.

A blogger and photographer who was fired from his job trading bonds back in 2010 has successfully raised $1 million — 10 times the goal — for a group of Brooklyn schoolchildren to visit Harvard University.

Brandon Stanton launched the “Humans of New York” blog and Facebook page shortly after his firing at the Chicago Board of Trade, in which hee takes photos of New Yorkers and then posts them on his blog with a piece of prose or a quote describing their lives, providing snippets of life that became popular. He began a campaign to raise $100,000 to send middle school students to Harvard, but the story went viral and he has surpassed $1 million in donations from 36,702 people, according to a USA Today report.

And it only took five days.

Stanton tweeted that the response was “amazing,” especially in such a short amount of time. It all began when Stanton published a photograph of Mott Hall Bridges eighth grader Vidal Chastanet, who described how his principal, Nadia Lopez, handles students who get in trouble, noting that she doesn’t suspend kids but rather talks to them about how society functions, and “she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built.”

He was moved to start a fundraiser a few days later to help the school — which is situated in a high-crime part of Brownsville — inspired by Lopez’s goal of taking her 6th-grade class on a tour of Harvard at the beginning of each school year as a way to encourage them to strive to do their best.

Stanton began the campaign on the crowdfunding sight Indiegogo.com, where the response was enormous. Lopez told her student that she had felt “broken” by recent events in the world and the strain in black and white relations, but the support had given “people a reason to feel a little less broken.”

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