‘No One Should Feel Invisible’

Febin Bellamy knows the sting of low expectations.

He came to the United States from India as a Malayalam-speaking 5-year-old — half-Trinidadian, half-Indian — settling with his family first in Brooklyn and then Monroe, N.Y. He fell in with a bad crowd, got suspended from high school for marijuana, and graduated with a 1.2 GPA and no particular plan. “People told me I’d never amount to anything, and I believed it,” he says now, five years later. “I was not motivated at all.”

Motivation found Mr. Bellamy that summer, when his father suffered a stroke, and the young man had to step up and help support the family. He got a job at Wendy’s — and he enrolled in community college, notched a 3.5 GPA, and eventually transferred to Georgetown University.

As striking as Mr. Bellamy’s unlikely path to the elite campus is what he accomplished while there: He founded Unsung Heroes, a group that shares the stories and dreams of the employees who quietly — often invisibly — keep the place clean and comfortable and its students transported and fed.

He sat down with The Chronicle and spoke about the lessons of adversity, the power of personal narrative, and the thrill of watching an idea built on human compassion get traction.

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How’s your dad doing?

He’s alive. He’s still in a lot of pain, but he’s definitely doing better. I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it when he was in the ICU. It was scary.

You barely made it out of high school, yet you just graduated from Georgetown. What happened?

Life kicked me in the pants. After my father’s stroke, it was like, “Wake the hell up. Get to work. Buckle down.” It wasn’t a choice.

What did you do at Wendy’s?

I was flipping burgers, doing cashier, doing fries, doing a lot of sweeping up, taking out garbage, cleaning toilets. It teaches you dignity.

I had always had a reputation as this kid who just didn’t care. All the kids knew me for that. So they would come in there and say all sorts of stuff: “Here you are working at Wendy’s.” I wasn’t even considering going to college.

But then you went to community college and turned things around.

I knew I wanted to stay close to home to find a quality education, because my mom was working and living by herself. So I stayed local and went to Rockland Community College. The president [Cliff L. Wood, now emeritus] came out at orientation and talked about all the kids who transferred to places like Harvard and UPenn and all these crazy schools. I was thinking, “What the hell? They transferred out of community college?” It really gave me hope.

Someone there saw something in you.

It was Hannah Lowney, director of the honors program. She changed my life. I went in there, and when she heard about my high-school GPA she almost fell off her chair. “Who is this guy trying to get into the honors program?” She has people lined up who have like 3.8, 3.9 GPAs from high school. They’re competing for the same spot. I talked to her. She saw potential in me. I wanted to be the next success story — I told her that. And she got me in on a provisional status. The two years I was at community college, I worked my butt off.

You started at Georgetown in the fall of 2014. What was it like trying to fit in?

It was tough as hell. I felt like I had to prove myself. I almost felt like I didn’t deserve to be at Georgetown. I’d study late at night, trying to catch up.

That’s when you spotted the same campus worker each night in the business school. How long did it take to have a genuine conversation?

Yeah. Oneil Batchelor. He’s the biggest influence I’ve had here at Georgetown. I’ve made a lot of friends here, but he’s going to be my friend forever. The first time was just a head nod. I have headphones on, he’s vacuuming. By maybe the third time, there’s a smile. Finally, I’m like, “Hey, how you doing?” Then there was a handshake. After that there was some conversation.

He’s not just a janitor. I met his daughter. We became friends. It was genuine. He invited me to his church. Oneil is just a cool dude. I saw people just walk past him and ignore him. I wished they would’ve known his story. I think the glue that really brings us together is that common humanity. I’d talk to him for hours about random things, like his catering business and how he grew up in Jamaica. We have a lot of things in common.

How did that friendship lay the foundation for Unsung Heroes?

A couple months later, there was a project in Jason Brennan’s “Moral Foundations of Market Society” class. The professor broke us into small groups and introduced an idea: “Try and make a difference in your community. Do something good.” After I met Oneil, I realized that people have cool stories. I knew his story, but what about everyone else? Oneil told me he felt invisible. No one should feel invisible.

And I thought, It’s not just him. There are other cafeteria workers that people don’t really know. That inspired me to talk to them and get to know their stories, and from there I decided to pitch it to the students in my group. Imagine how many times we wake up in the morning, we see our classrooms are clean. We see that the temperature is perfect. It’s not invisible people doing it. These are important folks in our communities. We should all know their names and their stories. That’s the whole point of Unsung Heroes.

How did you move your idea beyond the classroom?

For the project we interviewed six or seven workers. I just said to the class, “Here are the unsung heroes of Georgetown.” We had $1,000 from a class stipend that we could use, so we threw them an appreciation breakfast. After seeing the reactions of students, they’re like: “Holy sh—, I didn’t know that person’s story.” Mike the janitor’s been here for 10 years, and his wife died of breast cancer. Oneil has a passion for pursuing his own catering business. We’re using storytelling as a way of creating culture change. I spent the summer of 2016 just interviewing workers. We interviewed over 150 workers throughout the year.

So how did you launch Unsung Heroes?

We shared the stories publicly starting on April 1, 2016. We had a ton of stories backed up. But beyond just sharing stories, how do you actually use that fire in students to make a change? How do you go out of your way to help them? That’s where our crowdfunding really came about, to give back to the workers who gave so much to us.

But we’re doing more than just crowdfunding. We also helped Larry, the bus driver who wanted to be a singer. There are different ways of helping people.

When did the group’s work go viral?

In the fall of 2016, we did a surprise party for Suru Ripai, a dining-hall worker who hadn’t visited his home in South Sudan for 45 years. We gave him a check for $5,400. The press picked it up after it had been shared so many times on GoFundMe. NBC Washington picked it up on the day we surprised him. Then right around the same time, The Washington Post picked up the story about Oneil. That went viral.

What was that like?

It was controlled chaos. It was nuts. A lot of mixed emotions. We never thought it would be this big this quickly. We realized that now more than ever, people want to hear these stories of humanity.

And Unsung is spreading to other campuses?

Right now we have five: Georgetown, Wash U. in St. Louis, Notre Dame, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Maryland. Those are chapters that are up and running, sharing stories already. We have about 30 more in beta.

How are you paying the bills?

That’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out now, the business model. We’re thinking about expanding to companies, creating chapters of Unsung Heroes at Google or IBM or different companies.

After the publicity, Rockland invited you back to speak at commencement. How did that go?

It was surreal. It was good to see students who were in the same situation that I had been in. They can be inspired to start the next Unsung Heroes or something completely different. You never know what can happen from a simple interaction of people. That’s what I tried to relay.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Don Troop is an articles editor. Follow him on Twitter @dontroop or email him at don.troop@chronicle.com.