His donation was a mere $20 but seven-year-old Jack Swanson helps to restore faith in humanity through his most generous donation to help clean up a mosque in Austin, Texas which was vandalized on Monday.
According to reports, community members who were on their way to morning prayers at the Islamic Center of Pflugerville, a mosque located in a strip mall in Austin, Texas, were shocked to find the building and sidewalk vandalized with feces, as well as pages from the Qur'an, defaced with excrement as well and scattered outside the center.
The vandalism is being investigated by local police as a hate crime.
Laura Swanson, mentioned the incident to her son Jack while they were driving around and knew it was an opportunity to turn into a teaching moment for him.
"We were talking in the car how someone smeared poop on their church, and that was a really, really awful thing to do, and we had a good conversation what churches are for and how everybody's churches are important," she said.
Jack decided that he wanted to help the members of their community whose place of prayer was desecrated and went to the mosque with his mother to give them all the contents of his piggy bank which was full of pennies he had reportedly been collecting for some time. An amount of $20.
A board member from the Islamic Center, Faisal Naeem, personally met with Jack to accept his donation which he said was the most generous they have ever received.
"It's 20 bucks, but coming from Jack collecting his pennies, it's worth 20 million bucks to me and to our community," Naeem told reporters.
Although the mosque itself was not damaged, the Islamic Center was billed $150 for the clean-up of the wall and sidewalk.
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Photo: Jacob Edward | Flickr
