Community helps Philadelphia transgender teen

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - A transgender teen cut off from his parents is being helped by the community.

"Having to leave parents it emotionally wrecked me because you guys are supposed to be the ones who you know--nurtures me, take care of me and accept me no matter what," he told FOX 29.

17-year-old Shawn is transgender and says he's been on his own since last Christmas night with hardly anyone to turn to as he made his transition from Makaiah.

On his own in a sometimes rough city, Shawn turned to his English teacher Lauren Geschel who has helped get him from shelter to shelter--never giving up.

"He was in contact with me on a Friday and we thought he could make it the weekend and then we were in contact over the weekend and it was bad," she said. "I just really adamantly was not going to allow what was going on with him to continue."

He has shelter for the time being but needs clothes. Across town, Emily Greberman heard about Shawn's struggle and went to Twitter.

"All of the sudden, I post this and it has like 20,000 within the first couple of hours and I never expected it to one to that fast and now it's at over 100,000 likes and 20,000 retweets."

It even made BuzzFeed's list of '15 Really Awesome Things That Happened This Week'. Thousands of people from all over helping in some way. Shawn has already received some of the donations and is forever grateful.

"They've been like so generous to me. I've never had people be that nice to me. So at first I really didn't know how to handle it but I wasn't going to turn them down. I appreciate everything they've been doing for me and whatnot."