There I was, scrolling through my Facebook feed, and there was Humans of New York telling yet another amazing story – this time, about Harlem Grown and the man who began it in 2011, Tony Hillery. I loved this story, told in three blog posts, so I wanted to know more.

He was, in his own words, a big shot who lost it all in the financial crash. One day, reading about underfunded schools, he hopped on the subway and went to 135th Street in Harlem. “I couldn’t have been more arrogant. I walked through the doors of the first elementary school I could find, asked for the principal, and said: ‘I’m here to try to break the cycle of poverty.’”