12 Year Old Boy Raises $325,000 for Children of Ukraine

A 12 year old British boy’s woodworking project went viral so he seized the opportunity to raise money for the children of Ukraine through Save the Children.  Richard Clarkie knows of his son Gabriel’s love for woodwork and decided to post a tweet to encourage others to order his son’s creations.  The proud father posted a link to his son’s hobby of carving wooden bowls and posting them for sale on Instagram.

Richard’s tweet read “Lovely twitter people – I don’t know how many of you are also #instagram users but I’m looking for a wee favor. I’ve a 12yr old who loves woodwork. He spends hours on his lathe making bowls and creating chopping boards which he sells to save up for a mountain bike. So I was wondering if any of you fancied giving him a boost and following him on instagram at clarkie_woodwork it would make his day. Thanks in advance and feel free to retweet!”

Neither of them expected much from the tweet, and they certainly didn’t expect Clarkie’s Instagram account to grow from a modest 6 followers to 227,000 in just 48 hours.  Gabriel, who lives in Cumbria in northern England, quickly received 20,000 orders. But rather than fulfilling so many orders, he decided to make just a single bowl.  To symbolize the Ukrainian Flag, the wooden bowl was etched with blue and yellow rings.

Clarkie Woodwork——announced Gabrial would make one single bowl, Gabriel’s Bowl For Ukraine, to be given out in a lottery to anyone who makes a donation to Save The Children Ukraine.  His instagram page went viral again and with a little help from celebrity retweets by the likes of J.K Rowling, Nick Offerman and Stephen Fry. The $6,260 donation quickly grew to $325,000 with nearly 15,000 people donating.  

The lucky winner was Renuka Chapman who said “When Gabriel rang me to let me know I’d won the bowl, I was completely overwhelmed— I’ve never won a single thing before!  This bowl will be one of my most treasured possessions. It represents hope, compassion, and kindness… It will have pride of place in my home.”  Richard Clarkie said “I never imagined that my tweet would turn into this amazing thing… Somehow, it’s resulted in people donating over $325,000 to help children in Ukraine, it’s just incredible!”