crowdfunding

There’s a GoFundMe to Send This Popular Halal-Cart Worker on Vacation

“Let’s make this dream come true,” the page says. Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

On Tuesday, the New York Times ran a long slice-of-life story on a man named Kabir Ahmed, who is one of 10,000 food vendors in the city. Writer Tejal Rao followed him from Queens to near the World Trade Center, where he sets up shop at 7 a.m. every morning and serves chicken over rice for the next eight hours. The profile reels you in — it details the halal food-prep process; dives into the city’s Byzantine street-vendor rules; and makes it impossible not to love Ahmed, who immigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago, serves a famous chicken biryani, and loves internet memes. Lots of people really dug the story, and it seems Ahmed liked it, too:

Rao closed it by mentioning that Ahmed’s wife wants to spend some of their savings on a family Caribbean cruise this year. Ahmed isn’t sure they can afford that sort of trip, but Rao adds that he spent that day’s E-train ride into work dreaming about what it’d be like to “board a big ship with your family, to vacation as they do in the movies, to fall asleep at night without setting an alarm.”

A charitable reader, Jennifer Nelson, felt moved and started a GoFundMe called “A Caribbean Cruise for Kabir Ahmed.” As the name obviously suggests, it aims to crowdfund that tropical excursion Ahmed’s wife has set her eyes on for their family of six. “Everyone deserves a vacation,” Nelson writes in her plea for donations, “but especially the hard working folks who keep us fed.” She thinks $3,000 should do the trick, and has already raised $2,500. For some extra insurance, though, she signs off with a guilt-trippy rhetorical question — “Wouldn’t it be awesome to help this family make some memories?”

GoFundMe Hopes to Send Popular Halal-Cart Worker on Vacation