11-Year-Old N.Y.C. Boy Opens Thrift Shop for Low-Income Families: 'I Wanted to Be a Hero'

Obocho Peters is a fifth-grader on a mission to make sure those who are less fortunate are able to dress to impress.

With that in mind, the 11-year-old from Brooklyn, New York, runs Obocho’s Closet, a thrift store selling affordable donated clothes and shoes for kids for under $10, according to Good Morning America.

The project initially started in 2018 as an online thrift shop, but has since outgrown its digital life, and in December (on his birthday!) Obocho opened his first brick-and-mortar store in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush, according to the outlet.

“It makes me feel like the hard work I’ve been doing in this community… it finally paid off,” he told WNYW at the store’s grand opening, which even had Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams in attendance.

Obocho was able to get his dream off the ground thanks in part to a GoFundMe page, which explained the inspirational backstory to his mission.

The student wrote that after seeing Avengers: Infinity War, he asked his mom Sasha Peters for eight toys from the film.

When Peters said she couldn’t afford the toys, Obocho took matters into his own hands, selling clothes and shoes he no longer wore to pay for them himself.

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“I realized that other families must face these same challenges when taking care of their children,” he wrote. “That idea turned into the mission I have today — to help the community GROW.”

“I was inspired by all the superheroes helping to make the world a better place,” he added to GMA. “I wanted to be a hero myself by helping my mom.”

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Peters, a single mom from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, helped her son launch his website, and, spotting an entrepreneurial spirit, signed him up for business classes after school, according to GMA.

“You have to nurture kids when they come up with ideas and you have to pay attention to everything they say because they’re telling you how to groom them to be a better version of themselves,” she told the outlet.

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Because Obocho’s Closet is a for-profit business, Obocho wrote on his GoFundMe page that he found a different way to give back to the community: hosting free financial literacy seminars “geared towards teaching parents and kids how to save for college or pursue other goals like entrepreneurship.”

His efforts even earned reportedly him the title “Hero of the Month” in June from Adams.

“This young man personifies the great things young people are doing across our country and particularly in Brooklyn,” Adams told GMA.