“(Keoni) said, ‘I’m going to do as much as I can,’ ” April Ching said.

Sherman made $27,000 worth of donations in November to districts in Washington and California to pay off students’ lunch debt. “He’s always been that kindhearted kid,” his dad, Barry Ching said.Īs it turns out, it was a former Seahawk, Richard Sherman, who was the inspiration for the keychains. Keoni, who’s enrolled in the school’s Mandarin immersion program, was brainstorming projects for the week with his family last month. “That makes the world a better place,” he said.įranklin Elementary School this month will celebrate its Fourth Annual Kindness Week, a celebration of all things nice at the Vancouver Public Schools campus. Wealthy donors and corporations have cut large checks to districts across the country to ease the strain - and small donors, like little Keoni. And while school nutrition directors agree that all students should be fed, the effect is that school districts can rack up thousands of dollars in unpaid meals by the end of the school year. In Washington, a 2018 change to state law requires school districts to feed students a hot meal, regardless of whether they have money in their lunch accounts. “If they don’t have enough money, that’s money there,” Keoni said as he started on a new keychain, this one reading “Pizza.”Ī national spotlight has turned toward lunch debt in recent years. In less than a month, he’s raised $840 in sales and donations and is pushing toward $1,000, April Ching said.

Keoni is a Dolphins fan, his mom, April Ching, said. The customized trinkets go for $5 apiece, unless they’re Seahawks-themed, in which case the price is $19.77. Keoni Ching, an 8-year-old at Vancouver’s Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, is selling keychains made of lettered beads to pay off his classmates’ outstanding balances on their lunch accounts. A Clark County second-grader is working to make the world a little bit kinder, one bead at a time.

Who sells digital photo viewer keychain