10-Year-Old Texas Boy Works To Collect 500,000 Books For Those In Need

In an extraordinary act of kindness, a young Texas boy has embarked on a mission of collecting 500,000 books for those in need.

At 10 years old, Fort Worth’s Orion Jean already has a heart for service. Having collected more than 500 toys for a children’s hospital last August and securing over 100,000 meals for people experiencing food insecurity in November, Jean is now working to collect 500,000 books for kids who don’t have access to their own.

An avid reader, Jean says he saw a statistic stating that two out of three kids living in poverty have no books of their own. He decided to collect 500,000 books for disadvantaged children. So far, he has gathered some 40,000 books and hopes to have the rest by the end of August, after at least two more book drop-off events he’s scheduled in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we believe with the support of the community and hopefully the country, that we can reach this goal and help kids get books that they might not have had otherwise,” he says.