Popular social media influencer and philanthropist Donna “Aunty Donna” Gowe is pleased to have raised double the amount needed for college tuition fee for Dorian Leard, a fourth-year drama in education student at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in St Andrew.

Leard received $852,700, nearly twice his yearly tuition of $460,000. The handover took place at school facility on Friday. He was overjoyed about the donation.

“I am very thrilled that I have received all the help I needed to finish school. Which I appreciate a lot,” the 28-year-old St Elizabeth native told the Jamaica Observer.

“My ultimate goal is to become a lecturer at a university here in Jamaica, pouring back into education for our future generation. I also wanna be a drama therapist that will eventually help young minds in really understanding their true potential,” he said.

Aunty Donna explained how she learnt of Leard’s challenges.

“I was on my live on YouTube and Dorian called in, and he said he needed some assistance from me and I was listening to him. I actually told him I was closed off because I was doing some work behind the scenes. He kept talking and his story felt like something that I wanted to help because listening to his voice, you could hear the depression that he had to pay the money by Friday and he had no clue where it was coming from. That is how I said, OK, I will see what I can do, and I would have to go to your school to clarify that it is true, which I did and that is how he got the help,” the philanthropist told Observer.

“I plan on changing the direction in which I help persons because coming up, I used to help baby mothers, elderly, and so on. A lot of these persons, I built so many houses for and they were very ungrateful. They did not utilise their donations properly so…I want to help students who are doing well, and who are excelling but they do not have the aid to push them, and I said I would look for students in the communities — in the inner city who really cannot afford it. I will also ask the schools to recommend me to somebody who is not doing well,” she added.

Gowe, who grew up in Red Hills, St Andrew, and currently resides in the Mountain View area of the Corporate Area, has made a name for herself with her efforts on social media.

For the past three years, she has helped hundreds of less fortunate Jamaicans.

Currently being managed by Romeich Entertainment, she also made her acting debut last year in the production Bang-A-Rang Inna Aunty Donna House.