If you're not already following Humans of New York on Facebook [1] or Instagram [2], take a moment to go do that now — we'll wait. Now, why did I just tell you to go "like" another site? Because of stories like this.

Brandon Stanton takes pictures of people around New York City and features them on his social media feeds. Old, young, black, Asian, Hispanic, Caucasian — he photographs them all and gets them to open up about their lives. But when he posted his interview with 13-year-old Vidal Chastanet, readers reacted more strongly (more than 1 million Facebook "likes" [3]) than ever before:

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[4]

That post inspired Stanton to find principal Nadia Lopez and see why she inspired so many students:

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[5]

And launch a fundraising campaign to start an annual class trip to Harvard from her school:

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[6]

In under four days, Brandon and his Humans of New York community raised more than $1 million that will fund the annual class trip and a new Summer school program. Ellen DeGeneres invited Brandon, Vidal, and Lopez on her show to talk about their campaign and surprise them with a very special gift. Watch the video above to see how the whole story unfolded, and be inspired!