April’s very worthy winner of Cybersmile’s Cybersmiler of the Month Award will melt your heart and restore your faith in humanity. He’s 14 years old and his name is Darius Brown.
Known from a young age as “Sir Darius”, due to his love of wearing bow ties. Darius was diagnosed with cognitive speech delay and fine motor skills delay at a young age, his mother Jo was initially anxious to let Darius practice sewing skills.
His mum Jo, says “Because of this I felt it would be better to wait, but I never wanted him to feel like was different. So eventually I got him some safety scissors and he got to work and now he does amazing work with the sewing machine.”
At the age of 8, his enthusiasm won the family over and with the help of his sister, Dazhai, he set about learning how to make bow ties by hand.
After hearing that hundreds of dogs & cats were being moved to local shelters following the devastation of Hurricane Irma. Darius decided to help out and donated a box of his own handmade pet-size bow ties to New York City’s ASPCA animal shelter – so that the animals could wear to make them stand out to potential adopters.
Talking about making bowties for pet shelters across the US Darius said “It hurt my feelings a lot. So I made my mission to help as many dogs and cats in the world as I possibly can. Because I was making bow ties at the time, I just thought if people can look good in bow ties, why not dogs and cats?”
Darius’ bow tie donation quickly caught the attention of the media and also the many pet shelters across the country and around the world. He now spends much of his free time at the sewing machine – setting himself a target of sending a box to each and every US state.
Darius joins some huge names in the Cybersmiler of the Month Hall of Fame including Selena Gomez, Jo Jo Siwa, Lady Gaga and John Legend.
You can find out more about the work Cybersmile does in making the internet a more friendly and inclusive place for all, here!
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