Twitter lauds 8-year-old who paid off school’s lunch debt

Keoni Ching, a 8-year-old boy decided to sell key chains for $5 to celebrate ‘Kindness Week’ at Franklin Elementary in Vancouver.

An inspiring story of an 8-year-old boy in Washington is doing the rounds on the Internet who sold key chains to paid off $4,015 ( ₹2.87 lakh) of his school district lunch debt after he was inspired by former Seattle Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman.

Keoni Ching, a 8-year-old boy decided to sell key chains to pay off lunch debts for his school. (HT Photos)

The boy grew inspiration for his plan after hearing about how Richard Sherman paid off lunch debts for schools in Tacoma, Washington, and in California Keoni Ching, a 8-year-old boy decided to sell key chains for $5 to celebrate ‘Kindness Week’ at Franklin Elementary in Vancouver, where he is a student, the Daily Mail reported.

Once this news came out in the public domain, social media has been abuzz with reactions.

A user wrote, “This kid has more brains and compassion in his pinky than our glorious President.”

Another wrote, “This is a nice story about a nice kid doing a nice thing that wouldn’t need to be a story if we didn’t saddle hungry children with ‘lunch debt’.”

“Why does this kid even have to pay off lunch debt? Let’s do the math: public schools are nonprofits, so they’re getting the ‘food’ (& I use that loosely) at a nonprofit discount from a wholesaler, say Costco. Most of the prep for the food is not intensive” asked a user.

A post read, “This is a very neat gesture from this 8 year old, but he should not be doing what us adults should be doing, these issues shouldn’t happen, feed the children first.”