In just 24 hours, a New York photographer and his community raised more than $350,000 to show inner-city children a future beyond their neighbourhood. Now, they are working to fund a summer program to keep students "safe and productive" while school isn’t in session.
It all began when Brandon Stanton, the photographer behind the popular "Humans of New York" blog, met a student from Mott Hall Bridges Academy, a public school in Brooklyn, New York.
Stanton makes a living photographing people on the streets of New York, and sharing the photos and short anecdotes on his blog and social media feeds, including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. He asked who the biggest influence in the boy’s life is, and the student, named Vidal, responded "My principal, Ms. Lopez."
Vidal added: "When we get in trouble, she doesn't suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us … And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter."
The photo and story quickly went viral on social media.
Inspired, Stanton visited Nadia Lopez, also known as "Ms. Lopez," at her middle school in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Brownsville is known for high crime rates and gang activity.
New York’s 73rd precinct, which covers most of the Brownsville area, saw 18 murders, 33 rapes, and 608 assaults in 2014, according to New York Police Department statistics. That same year, New York Magazine dubbed the neighbourhood the "murder capital of New York City." In 2012, the New York Times published a piece with the headline, "Brownsville, Brooklyn, is terrorized by gangs."
"This is a neighbourhood that doesn’t necessarily expect much from our children, so at Mott Hall Bridges Academy, we set our expectations very high," Lopez told Stanton. "We don't call the children 'students,' we call them 'scholars.'
"When you tell people you’re from Brownsville, their face cringes up. But there are children here that need to know that they are expected to succeed."
As photos of Lopez and her students spread across the Internet, Stanton, Lopez, and the school’s assistant principal brainstormed how the photographer’s 11,870,000 Facebook followers could help the school’s scholars succeed.
They came up with a campaign to fundraise for an annual school trip to tour Harvard University. The trip would act as an inspiration for incoming Grade 6 students and show them a world outside their neighbourhood.
Stanton set up a crowdfunding project and set a goal to raise $100,000 to fund three years’ worth of trips for three classes. After 24 hours, he posted on Facebook to say that donors had surpassed $350,000, enough to make the Harvard trip a permanent part of school curriculum.
For the next two weeks, Stanton says, every additional $40,000 the campaign raises will go toward summer programming for the students.
As of Saturday morning, more 18,500 people had donated $531,800 -- enough for four years of summer programming on top of the annual Harvard trip.
