(CNN) An Indiana teenager is being honored after a distressed parent left a newborn child in a baby drop-off box he raised money to install.

Hunter Wart, 19, spent more than a year mowing lawns and scrapping metal to raise the $10,000 needed to purchase a Safe Haven Baby Box for the Seymour Fire Department.

Wart was a junior at Columbus North High School when he decided to raise the funds as part of his senior project.

"It was a lot of hard work," his mom Julia Kwasniewski told CNN. "A lot of blood, sweat and tears." Wart spent a lot of time collecting metal, which Kwasniewski helped him shuttle to a scrap yard.

The student's hard work paid off in June 2019, when the box was finally installed at the fire department. Such boxes are meant to prevent abandonment of newborns.

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