It's good that the world has kids like Dylan Duran, an Albuquerque, NM, elementary schooler who has inspired his community with a powerful act of kindness toward a classmate.
Since just after the start of this school year, Dylan's mother Josette has been packing two lunches for her son, after he asked for more food. At first she worried he wasn't getting enough to eat. But, as she explained in an emotional Facebook post, and later to local ABC affiliate KOAT, Dylan wasn't eating the second lunch at all—he was giving it away.
"It's for this boy," Dylan reportedly told his mother. "He only eats a fruit cup for lunch can you make him lunch too? I don't think he has lunch money."
From that point on, Dylan was sent to school with two meals—one for him, and one for his classmate.
"This hits home to me because a few years ago, me and my son were homeless," Duran explained to the station. "I was living in my car, I was washing him in bathrooms, and we didn’t have food."
But after Dylan's request for a second lunch, Duran went even further, raising $400 from the local volleyball team she coaches—money she used to reportedly pay off all the outstanding cafeteria accounts at her son's school.
"Now no one in that school owes any lunch money to anybody, and everybody can eat," she told KOAT.
In a subsequent video posted to Facebook on October 15, Duran expressed both shock and gratitude over the response her simple act has generated since it hit the news.
"I didn't expect it to get as big as it did. I've told some of my friends too, I don't want it. Make it go away. It's not that I'm not thankful it's just—I don't think I did anything special," she explained, growing visibly emotional. "I just think that—and I've told everybody, even the news reporter—I just did what a human being is supposed to do."
In response to the outpouring of support she's received over her generosity, Duran urged everyone who's contacted her to redirect their efforts elsewhere.
"Don't give back to me. I don't need anything. Me and my son don't need anything," she implored. "What I've been telling those I've been responded to is go to your local elementary school, go to the middle school, go to the high school, and, whatever you wanted to give to me, give to them."