Louisville teen to be honored by Nickelodeon for giving back - WDRB 41 Louisville News

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville teen is receiving national recognition for giving back to his community.

Fourteen-year-old Andrew Dunn started Random Acts of Kindness, or RAK Louisville. Now he's being honored by Nickelodeon with an award he hopes will help spread his mission beyond Louisville.

About five years ago, Dunn founded RAK Louisville, which is an organization on a mission to flood the city with kind gestures and acts of service.

"If you can do a positive thing in someone's day, it could change their life in a positive way," Dunn said.

The DuPont Manual freshman encourages people to complete kindness challenges such as food boxes. He also helps others find service projects, and motivates them to start their own projects through social media and an app he's developed.

"I can go on daily RAK ideas, and we have lists of random acts of kindness you can do," Dunn said.

Thousands of acts of kindness later, and the city-wide movement caught the attention of Nickelodeon's HALO awards. "I'd watched the show before in the previous years, but it was just a shock when I actually did win it," Dunn said.

HALO stands for "helping and leading others," and honors teens making a difference in their communities. "If you told me two years ago I'd be on Nickelodeon, I'd be like you're just playing with me right now," he said.

Four kids from across the country were honored at this year's award show. Dunn and his fellow winners were flown out to New York City at the beginning of the month and received the all-star treatment.

"It was awesome. It was something I'll remember for sure," Dunn said.

Nickelodeon also awarded him $20,000 for RAK Louisville and a surprise $10,000 scholarship. And while he's excited to see himself on national TV, he's more excited about what the show will do for his charity.

"It's going to be amazing for the publicity for the organization, and just getting it out there and so that's really going to help RAK Louisville and spread the word," Dunn said.

Back home, Dunn is still riding the wave of excitement from the award show and pressing on to his next challenge -- his annual 23 Days of Kindness Campaign.

"It's like the advent calendar type thing where you do an act of kindness every day leading up to December 23," he said.

You can catch Andrew in action on Nickelodeon. The HALO Awards begin at 7 p.m. Sunday.

The 23 Days of Kindness calendar can be found here.

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