Florida teen works to pay off lunch debt for other students

A young student at an Orlando elementary school showed an act of kindness by using his hard-earned money on his friends.

Arman Shah, a fifth-grader at Avalon Elementary School in Orlando, Florida paid the due balances of all lunch accounts for other students in the school.

Shah used his own money, which he earned by working in his uncle’s store, to pay the debts of other students.

The young student’s kind gesture comes in the spirit of “giving” tradition brought by the Christmas season. Shah was particularly inspired after watching a documentary about “lunch shaming.”

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To honor Shah’s generosity, a team of Nike representatives and officials from the Orange County Public Schools at Avalon Elementary visited him.

They paid him a visit during Ms. Jackson’s class, giving him a complete surprise. He was then rewarded with some custom-made Nike shoes.

Shah later revealed that he never expected that the honor was for him. "I thought they were gonna celebrate Ms. Jackson, not me!" the young boy told the news outlet.

Shah’s mother, Bella Sawkar, later expressed her pride and delight at her son’s noble act and stated, “That's what we kind of have to teach our kids today. Teach love and pay it forward. So proud of him!"

Earlier this December, another young boy also showed a similar generosity by going beyond his way to raise enough money to buy a gravestone for his deceased friend.

12-year-old Kaleb Klakulak, from Michigan, made headlines after he took up odd jobs collecting bottles and raking leaves so that he could buy a headstone for his best friend, Kenneth Gross, who died on May 1 due to congestive heart failure.

The two boys remained the best of friends since their second grade and Klakulak was by Gross’s bedside until the very end.

Previously, another 10-year-old boy from Arkansas also displayed a random act of kindness by donating his guitar money to a family that had lost their loved one in an accident.