Photo: Andy Hogg/Unsung Heroes
Georgetown students raised more than $5,000 for Umberto “Suru” Ripai, a cashier at the dining hall, who is now able to visit his family in South Sudan for the first time in 45 years.
On Facebook, Cousin Claire reposted a wonderful story that Cousin Nancy had shared. It describes exactly the kind of outreach I think of when I say that small acts by one person can make the world a better place.
Petula Dvorak writes at the Washington Post, “Every night, they had the same routine. The Georgetown University business student would settle in for his cram session — soda, chips, books lined up. And the janitor would come in to start his night shift — polishing each of the windows in the study room, moving amid all those books and chips and sodas. Invisible.
“ ‘There was this space, like ice separating us,’ said Oneil Batchelor, an immigrant from Jamaica. The janitor worked around the students — many of them in their 20s like him, many with entrepreneurial ambitions like him — for nearly a decade before one of them finally broke that ice last year.
“A nod one night. A hello the next.
“And within weeks, Batchelor and the student, Febin Bellamy, were having long talks about being immigrants, about wanting to be entrepreneurs, about politics and history and music. Bellamy even went to Batchelor’s church and met his 6-year-old daughter.
“After he formed that bond with the once-invisible worker, Bellamy couldn’t stop noticing the others. …
“Each of those workers has a story. Many of them are immigrants, and their collective histories of war and flight and families left behind offer a master class in geopolitics. No tuition needed.
“Bellamy understands because these are his people. His family immigrated to the United States from India when he was 5. When they got to New York, his mother worked as a nursing assistant and his father as a customer service rep while they were going to college at night and raising a family in the few hours left over.
“Bellamy started at a community college and then transferred to Georgetown as a junior. He knows the scrap and fight the folks fixing pipes and cleaning bathrooms have inside them.
“So he had a brainstorm. What if he found a way to introduce the workers to the students? And that idea went from a class project in April to a fundraiser making real change today.
“He did it in the language his peers understand: a Facebook page. He calls it Unsung Heroes, and he began posting little profiles of workers around campus. …
“The students also learned about some of the hopes percolating, as windows are washed and floors are scrubbed. And they’re helping.
“Turns out that Batchelor really is a gifted cook. Students who read about him encouraged him to hold fundraisers serving his now-famous-on-campus chicken. They raised $2,500, got him catering gigs and helped him put up his own web page, Oneil’s Famous Jerk.
“ ‘It’s like the door has cracked open in front of me,’ he said. ‘And I can smell the air coming through. The inspiration.’ ” Lots more here.
Photo: Andy Hogg/Unsung Heroes
Georgetown University business major Febin Bellamy, left, talks with janitor Oneil Batchelor, who wants to open a chicken joint. Students raised $2,500 and got him catering gigs. 
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