The North End’s Francis Shea and his candy bar charity drive makes it big in the Boston Globe today where columnist Yvonne Abraham writes the story. After winning a 5 pound Hersey Bar, the 10-year old St. John School student decided to hold a raffle for the bar to benefit a cystic fibrosis charity. From the Globe interview:
“I thought of cancer, then I thought of cystic fibrosis,” he said. His beloved art teacher at the Nazzaro, Josephine Lepore, has a granddaughter with the latter disease, and the center has held fund-raisers for research in the past, “so I knew it was a bad disease,” the boy said.
He went right back out on to the street again, this time hitting up locals and tourists to buy one raffle ticket for $1, six tickets for $5, or 25 tickets for $20. At first, he’d hoped to raise $500. He blew past that in a few weeks. So far, he’s up to $1,073.
It doesn’t hurt that he’s doing this in a tight, magical neighborhood, where the streets are alive every day and where everybody still knows everybody despite massive gentrification. Also helpful: The kid is adorable. The raffle will be drawn on Thursday at the Nazzaro’s annual barbecue. Read the full article.
The Nazzaro Center’s Carl Ameno first published this story about a month ago.
