Wail Alselwi runs a bodega on Staten Island. He also runs a rewards program that's turned into something bigger than either of them expected.
It started small, the way good things often do. In 2023, Alselwi made a bet with a 12-year-old regular named Zamier Davies: boost your grades, get a free Oreo milkshake. Davies climbed from the high 80s onto the honor roll. Alselwi followed through, filmed it, posted it to TikTok. The video went viral.
That moment became "Grades for Grabs" — a simple program with a clear logic: show up with a good report card, pick a reward from the bodega. Free snacks. Cash. A t-shirt. Whatever.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat started as a bet became a pilgrimage
Kids now travel to his bodega specifically for this. A fourth grader named Maleek came down from Pennsylvania with a 97% average. Alselwi handed him $100 and told him to keep grabbing items off the shelves. When Maleek reached for bread, eggs, and rice—groceries for his family—Alselwi stopped him. "Keep grabbing, keep grabbing," he said. "Listen, you deserve this. You did good in school, okay?"
It's the kind of moment that sounds small until you think about what it actually is: an adult in a position to help, choosing to help. Not with a lecture. Not with conditions. Just: you did the work, you get to feel celebrated.
Alselwi told TODAY that he misses his own children back in Yemen. He takes pride in this, in showing up for kids in his neighborhood the way he wishes someone could show up for his own. "My biggest dream in my life is to bring my children, my own children, here to America," he said.
The program has grown fast enough that he needed to crowdfund it. A GoFundMe he set up has raised over $377,000 toward a $400,000 goal—money from people who watched the videos and decided this was worth supporting. "Let's say I'm giving them $100 or if I'm giving them snacks for free or a T-shirt, to me, that does not matter," Alselwi said. "The most important thing is you celebrate them and you show them that you really care about their hard work."
That's the whole thing, really. Not the money. Not the snacks. The celebration. The proof that someone noticed.
