Jacob Vogeley is 10 years old (almost 11! if you ask him) and lives in Newark, Delaware. He is a creative kid with a very active imagination.
A little over a month ago, Jacob started picking a up a few pieces of aluminum foil and was trying to make a ball as small and dense as possible. If he hit with a hammer enough it was would become shiny and mirror-like. After a few days of this, he approached his father and asked him to work at his restaurant, Drip Cafe, on a Saturday morning to earn a few rolls of foil to add to his aluminum foil ball. So he would worked for a few hours, and then we went to the dollar store to pick up a few rolls of aluminum foil.
He asked his dad Greg to put it on my social media that night, and a few friends donated some money to the cause. So, Greg went out and bought more foil for Jacob. Never afraid to talk to anyone, he would walk down Main St in Newark and ask various restaurants for extra foil wraps to add to his collection. As the donations began to grow, so did Gerald… the foil ball… It had a name now.
Since Gerald was growing, and the hammer was cutting it anymore, we decided to take Gerald to Greg’s friends property and smash it with the front end loader on his tractor. They are trying to keep it packed tight and dense, because its got a lot more growing to do. As the foil was adding up, Jacob and his dad started talking about an end-game for their friend, and how they can use this to help other people. That’s when Jacob decided that they would use the proceeds from recycling the ball to donate money to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia!