Students Crowdfund to Send Beloved Custodian on Vacation

Herman Gordon hadn't seen his family in nearly 10 years
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 27, 2018 5:31 PM CDT
Students Raise Thousands to Send Custodian on Vacation
Montego Bay.   (Getty Images / lucky-photographer)

Students love Herman Gordon, who has worked as a custodian at the UK's Bristol University for 12 years. So when they found out that Gordon, who moved to England when he was 12 and rarely sees his family in Jamaica, hadn't been back to visit his homeland in almost 10 years, they decided it was time to send him on a long-overdue vacation. Hadi Al-Zubaidi, a medical student, came up with the idea to launch a crowdfunding campaign to send Gordon and his wife to Kingston for a week, and the $2,000 needed for plane tickets was raised in just days, CNN reports. Gordon shared photographs from his trip earlier this month, the Independent reports.

"Everybody loves Herman for his happy energy," Al-Zubaidi explains, and this was a way students could "[give] back for all that he does." The campaign was shared on an anonymous campus confessions Facebook page normally used for students to gossip—and quickly went viral, with hundreds of students contributing to the fundraiser. Sandals Resorts heard about it, and invited the Gordons to spend two nights during their visit at the company's luxury Montego Bay resort as a gift for their 23rd wedding anniversary. A video shared by crowdfunding site JustGiving shows Gordon's tearful reaction when students presented him with the money for his trip and a note explaining it. "When you see things like this, you know that somebody loves you," he said. (More uplifting news stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X