Darius Brown is a little boy from Newark, New Jersey who was born to be a leader.

When Darius was just 8 years-old, he found himself being plagued with speech, fine motor skills, and comprehension delays. To overcome his issues with fine motor skills, Darius started helping his older sister cut out fabric for bows.

After a few years, Darius had overcome the issues he was having and was now making bows, bow ties, and other fabric designs just for fun. One of his favorite things to do was to dress up his family dog in a bowtie, so when he saw a news story about dogs and cats who were displaced by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma in 2017, he was devastated. Though he was only 11 at the time, Darius began thinking of ways that he could help.

After seeing how cute his own dog looked in bowties, he came up with a brilliant idea: put shelter animals in cute bow ties to boost their chances of getting adopted!

Darius founded his own business called Beaux and Paws, and he made himself the CEO. He then started cranking out as many ties as he could and donating them to shelter residents by the thousands. When other companies heard what he was doing, they began sending him donations, some monetary and some comprised of big boxes full of fabrics.

Darius’ audience grew overtime to the point where he now has over 43,000 followers on Instagram! Darius has helped countless animals get noticed on Petfinder and other adoption sites, sending more animals to their forever homes and saving them from being euthanized.

 

Darius’ sister Dazhai Brown just started a GoFundMe to get more support for his mission, as he is hoping to visit five more states to volunteer at shelters and give them his bowties.

“He motivates and inspires me everyday,” Dazhai wrote. “He is such an incredible young man and I will do everything I can to help him on his journey. I’m supporting him in his cause 100% and I hope you will join me. No donation is too small.”

What an incredible young man! Find out more about what he is doing in the video below.