The New Jersey Association of Student Councils (NJASC) has announced that Mercer County’s Hope Loves Company is NJASC’s charity of the year for the 2015-2016 school year.
NJASC, established in 1927, is one of the oldest state Student Councils in the United States with members from high schools and middle schools both public and private, throughout New Jersey. In 1981, NJASC adopted the annual State Charity program. Each year, they collect donations from Student Councils throughout New Jersey to support a charity selected by the State Officers elected to represent all the student leaders of the state. To date, this extraordinary group of students has raised over three million dollars for state nonprofits.
This year’s charity, Hope Loves Company, was founded in 2012 by President, Jodi O’Donnell-Ames. It was established to fill a big need in the ALS community- to support children who have parents and grandparents living with ALS. ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects 30,000 Americans annually. Patients typically live only two to five years after onset of symptoms. The disease has no known cause or cure to date and 85% of patients have children. Hope Loves Company or HLC is the only nonprofit with this mission in the entire United States.
O’Donnell-Ames lost her husband Kevin O’Donnell to ALS in 2001. He was only 35 years old. Two years later, she married Warren Benton Ames, also a widower to ALS. The Mercer County couple united in hope and raised three children who had lost a parent to ALS before the age of 10. There were no available resources for their children so they vowed to create them. Warren’s children: Nora and Adam Ames, and Jodi’s daughter, Alina O’Donnell, have all graduated from Hopewell Valley Central High School and are now volunteers at Hope Loves Company, helping children who are currently caregivers to their terminally ill parents.
O’Donnell-Ames was a high school student council Vice President and member of NJASC. Today, watching their children volunteer at Hope Loves Company’s premier program, Camp HLC, brings joy to the couple.
Both The New Jersey Association of Student Councils and Hope Loves Company are excited to watch the 2015-2016 school year unfold. NJASC will be inviting the staff of HLC to many speaking engagements across the state and HLC can’t wait to work with the state’s young adults who are making the world a better place!
For more information, visit hopelovescompany.com, contact HLC at hopelovescompany@gmail.com or view the HLC video at youtube.com/watch?v=ZRZmG-oA85w.
