Volunteer campaign inspiration Robby Eimers, center, makes "a world of difference" for Detroit homeless people, NBC Nightly News says. (Photos by Ronnie Polidoro/NBC)
"NBC Nightly News" aired an upbeat Detroit feature in its weekly Making a Difference segment (video below) about generous, thoughtful acts of kindness.
Robby Eimers is "like the Pied Piper," says Sheilah Clay, head of the Neighborhood Services Organization in Detroit.
The latest honoree is Robby Eimers, a Macomb County 12-year-old "on a mission to help the homeless," reporter Jacob Passy writes in an online version of the report:
His efforts to serve the needy began three years ago when his grandmother Cindy Kostukoff took him to a homeless warming center in downtown Detroit. There, they passed out coats and blankets — which Robby bought with his own allowance and birthday money — to the people looking to escape the winter cold.
What Kostukoff initially thought would be a one-time act of kindness lit a fire in Robby. . . . The two started to go more regularly – first once every other month and then once month until eventually visiting the homeless every Saturday.
Joined by the boy's mom, Rachel Eimers, they now set up folding tables each Saturday in a Detroit park and serve food. Wal-Mart and the Detroit Red Wings donate bottles of water and clothing. ""How would you feel if you were in their shoes?" the tween says.
Robby, though, doesn't just sit back and let others do all the work. He goes out into the crowd that forms around the tables his grandmother sets up to dish out the food and bring meals to folks in wheelchairs or too weak to walk up.
The New Haven family also started an Eimers Foundation, which NBC says gets support from the Detroit-based nonprofit Neighborhood Service Organization (NSO). -- A.S.
