Texas boy turns $500 prize into drive delivering 100,000 meals and 500,000 books

A $500 prize from a school speech contest led a Texas teenager to launch a toy drive for children at a local hospitalOrion Jean,15, is the founder of Race to Kindness, a youth-led initiative that encourages people to identify needs around them and respond through practical acts of service. He was named TIME’s 2021 Kid of the Year and has gone on to become an author and public speaker.The idea began in 2020, when Jean took part in a national kindness speech contest. In his speech, he argued that kindness was something anyone could practise and that people could choose to act rather than wait for someone else to make a difference.Jean told Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), a non-profit children's literacy organization in the United States, that winning the contest became the “catalyst” for something much bigger.