A student in Preston in the UK has launched a campaign that has raised thousands of pounds for a homeless man named Robbie after he offered to give her some money so she could get a taxi home.
Dominique Harrison-Bentzen, who studies at the University of Central Lancashire, was queueing at an ATM recently on December 4th to get money for a taxi home when she realised that she'd lost her ATM card. Seeing that she was in trouble, a homeless man named Robbie decided to offer her the £3 that he had so she could get home, a gesture which touched her greatly.
She didn't take the money, and instead went about finding a way to try and help Robbie. She's set up a crowdfunding page with gogetfunding (which is currently down under the sheer number of visitors the story has attracted) where she had raised over £9,000 as of yesterday, when she embarked on a 24 hour period where she would go homeless in order to better understand Robbie's plight.
She has also set up a Facebook page and a Twitter too where you can keep up with the progress of the project. The idea is to be able to get him a place to stay so that he can then have an address to seek work, and speaking about the campaign, Harrison-Bentzen said that his kind gesture to her was not the only one that he'd done: "I set on a mission to find this man, the more I spoke about him the more kind gestures I learnt about such as him returning wallets untouched to pedestrians and offering his scarf to keep people warm".
The campaign has now gained international attention, and has already raised a huge amount of awareness for homelessness in the city, in particular at a time of year that is all about giving. If you want to try and help with homelessness in Ireland, then visit Focus Ireland or The Simon Community for more information.
Via The Independent. Pic via Leo Reynolds/Flickr
