The Woohoo! Report

by MICHAEL FREEMAN

GOOD DEEDS: Teenager Cameron Stewart is on a mission to make a million – and give it away – before his 20th birthday

‘I WAS IN this café the other week,” says Cameron Stewart, “and I was buying an ice-cream. So I gave the guy at the desk a fiver and said, the next person who orders an ice cream, tell them it’s on the house. Tell them it’s free, and this will pay for it.”

Cameron Stewart is an 18-year-old from Holywood, near Belfast, and this sort of thing is exactly his forte. He is the proprietor of Ark clothing. The acronym stands for Acts of Random Kindness, and the idea is to encourage wearers to perform, as his website suggests, “One Ark every time the clothing is worn.” It’s sort of like putting on a superhero costume, except your superpower might be the willingness to give up your seat on the bus.

The point, says Stewart, is to change the way people behave. “In the world, everyone is just out for themselves,” he says. “And to an extent that works.

But I think when you start to put yourself last, you realise that it is the best way to live.” So the clothes are really just a prod in the right direction. “I want the logo and symbol to inspire people. Hopefully people will see it and recognise it, and think ‘Oh yeah – I should really do something for someone’. That’s the idea.”

He shows me one of the Ark tops. Each one sold has a cardboard tag, personally attached by Stewart, with one suggested act of random kindness. They read a little like the cards in a Monopoly game. This one says: “Pay for a random pump at the petrol station. This could be a costly one – but imagine if someone did it for you.” As he shows it to me, he can’t resist a little salesman’s pitch. “You can see, can’t you,” he says, “they’re class quality.” It does look like a nice shirt.

So did the clothes come first, or the concept? Was the idea always to change the world? “No,” he says. “No, no, no. It was originally going to be just for Cameron’s profit. And for me to be a millionaire by the time I was 20.

But then I realised that it’s more fun to give money away than to store it all up. So it changed to being a millionaire by the time I was 20, and giving it all away.” All the profits from Ark clothes go to charitable works – basically, acts of kindness on a larger scale. “When the whole business was building up, I made a group on Facebook,” Stewart says. “There are about 500 or 600 members now. And just before Christmas I sent out a message saying, if you see a need anywhere, just e-mail me and we’ll pay for it.”

So what have they done so far? “One girl e-mailed and said: ‘There’s a woman I work with who’s recently had a child. And she was back to work within a week of having the baby, because she doesn’t have any money and she’s really, really struggling.’ So I gave her some money, and they made up a Christmas hamper and delivered it. We did a few hampers.” The group also delivered presents to a Belfast homeless shelter.

How did he get started in the clothes business so young? “Well, when I was in school, I was an entrepreneur at heart,” he says. “I could sell anything, and I always tried to sell anything. Just for the fun of it, I guess. And I started buying designer clothing online, and selling it online. And then from doing that, all these Chinese suppliers e-mailed me, so I ended up getting this massive list of factories in China. All these contacts.”

When he came up with the idea for Ark – and after his exams were over — he went to China himself to check he wasn’t buying from a sweatshop. “Thankfully, the first guy I met was just fantastic, and the factory was great. We drew up a contract and got 600 shirts ordered. It took a week.”

This is all highly creditable. But, I ask, doesn’t he miss normal 18-year-old activities? “I do miss Xbox and all that kind of stuff,” he says. “I would love to sit and do that all day. But I think this’ll be far more rewarding, even though it means answering e-mails all day.”

Cameron is sceptical about the idea of going to college. “The businessmen I aspire to be like don’t have degrees. They just started off. A lot of my friends have gone, but most of them are still based in Belfast, so I’m still kind of living that life. Apart from business meetings, and bank manager stuff, and all that.”

www.arkchangeyourworld.com

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by Rick Reilly

A few seconds left. The game teeters on these two free throws. The shooter gulps. The packed gym goes silent, save for the tapping of a white cane on the back of the rim. That’s right. The shooter’s brother is under the hoop, rapping a cane on the rim. That’s because the shooter, Matt Steven, is blind.

So why is a blind kid in a competitive CYO game for sighted high schoolers in Upper Darby, Pa.? Because he doesn’t like to miss anything — especially free throws.

Matt, a senior, had been on the St. Laurence CYO team for a year and never played in a game — never expected to. “He just likes being on the team,” says Matt’s brother and coach, Joe. Matt shoots free throws every practice, though, making about half. And that’s what gave Joe a crazy, unthinkable, wonderful idea.

Before a charity tourney this past February, Joe asked the other teams if Matt could shoot all of St. Laurence’s free throws. Amazingly, they agreed. So did the refs. A blind kid was going to be his team’s designated shooter. Hey, it’s still better than Shaq.

Did that make Matt nervous? “Nah,” he says. “I shoot ‘em all the time!”

The first game, Matt came in and — to the crowd’s shock — made his first two. He was escorted back to the bench, where he grinned as if he had just kissed the head cheerleader. He was 4-for-8 that day.

Matt doesn’t talk much — he has a stutter — so when Joe got home late after the game, their mom, Joan, asked, “Any idea why Matt’s been smiling all night?”

“Oh yeah,” Joe yawned. “He shot all our free throws tonight. Going to tomorrow night, too.”

Joan about dropped the spaghetti. Does she like it when Matt rides a bike? Ice-skates? Plays soccer? Sort of. She also dreads the day he comes home hurting.

But Matt already knows what it’s like to be hurting. Hurting is being born with two permanently detached retinas. Hurting is having your left eye removed in the fifth grade and the right in the sixth. Hurting is when they send you to a high school for the blind even though the last thing you want is to be around only other blind kids. Matt wants to be around other kids. He aches to be treated normal. Not “He does so great for a blind kid!” Just normal.

That’s why the free throws meant so much. He’d begged his parents to let him transfer to a regular school — Monsignor Bonner. And he’d begged his brother to let him join his friends on the CYO team. And then, for the first time in his life, he was going to be one of them.

Which brings us to Matt’s moment in that second game. He’d missed his first six free throws, and St. Laurence was down eight to St. Philomena. Then a full-court press pulled the team to within one with 10 seconds left. That’s when St. Laurence’s best shooter — 6′4″ senior Ryan Haley — was fouled in the lane. Surely, with the game on the line, the team stud would shoot his own free throws, right?

Up in the stands, Matt’s mom was hoping: Please don’t make him shoot these.

And Haley really was going to shoot them, until he looked over at Matt on the bench. “And I thought, He comes to every game, he never misses a practice, he cheers us on. He deserves a shot. I mean, it’s everyone’s dream to make those shots.”

So out comes Matt. And for the first time, the St. Phil fans aren’t rooting for him. In fact, they look like they’d prefer that he shoot straight into the hot dog table. “That might have been the best moment of all for Matt,” recalls Joe. “For once, he was just normal.”

Now the ball bounces under Matt’s hand. Now the picture shakes in Mom’s viewfinder. Now the rim pings from the cane.

Matt lets go. Off the backboard and through. Tie game. Crowd goes berserk. Says Joe: “I think it helped that he’s blind. He couldn’t see the crowd, the scoreboard, his teammates’ faces.”

The crowd stills again. Dribble. Tap. Shoot. Bank. Swish! Up by one. The gym windows nearly break.

St. Phil’s players forget to give Matt time to get off the court. They race the ball up. Nine guys are running around Matt, who’s trying to find a way to the bench. Make that 10, since Ryan’s already off the bench and pressing. Make that 11, since Joe — tears in his eyes — is trying to get to Matt. Chaos. Joy. Wonder.

St. Phil’s desperate shot misses. Game over.

Since then, Matt’s life has gone all kinds of crazy, unthinkably wonderful. His teammates call him Shooter. A girl says she heard all about him. He’s even thinking about asking somebody to prom.

I hope she says yes. Best blind date of her life.

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