What better time of the year than to have a free-good story. Zach Bonner is a twelve-year-old. However, rather than playing video games all afternoon long, Zach Bonner has his own nonprofit group, the Little Red Wagon Foundation, that helps homeless children.
Beliefnet announced Zach Bonner as the 10th annual award winner of its "Most Inspiring Person" on Wednesday. The twelve-year-old blue-eyed redhead received more votes than even Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a US Airways plane in the Hudson River.
Last year's winner was Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University known for "The Last Lecture." The "Last Lecture" was meant to be a treatise on Pausch's demise, as he was dying, but it turned out to be a lecture on how to live.
For Zach Bonner, however, his charitable activities began when he was six years old. He went up and down the streets of his neighborhood hauling his red Radio Flyer wagon to collect food and water for those affected by Hurricane Charlie, which had hit Florida.
Later, as his mother asked him what he wanted to focus on next, he said he wanted to help homeless people. As she told him he might want to trim that idea down a little, he chose homeless children. Thus was born the Little Red Wagon Foundation.
Zach Bonner lives with his mother, Laurie Bonner, who works in real estate from home. He attends classes online through the Hillsborough Virtual School. His father "is not in the picture," his mother said.
On Saturday, NPR interviewed Zach Bonner. When asked if he manages to do that activities that other children do, such as video games, he said yes. However, he considers his foundation his "sports."
When asked if he manages to get his friends to participate, he said, no. Most of them, he indicated, don't care. He can't understand why, he added, because he finds his foundation so fulfilling.
Written by Michael Santo
HULIQ.com
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