JJ’s Friends began with a simple belief: every child deserves to feel like they belong.

For me, this mission is personal.

In third grade, I shared a classroom with a boy named JJ. He had a disability, and one day he was looking for something he had lost. The adult in charge shouted at him and sent him to search the long way around the room. What he was looking for was a few steps from where he stood.

JJ did not fully understand what was happening. The few of us in the room did. Children can feel cruelty before they can name it. None of us said a word, and I was one of them. I had no power and no language for it yet, and I carried that moment for years.

I also know what it feels like to stand on the edge of a room, so I knew what I was watching.

The only other place I ever saw JJ was at high school football games on Friday nights, cheering from the stands with his dad. He looked like what he was: a kid at a game with his dad. The picture stayed with me, a stadium as the place where someone finally got to just be included.

JJ’s Friends grew out of both memories. It does not undo what happened to JJ. It answers it.

Where there was humiliation, we offer dignity.

Where there was exclusion, belonging.

Where there was silence, action.

Our mission is to give children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and their families, access to local sporting events. On paper, that is tickets, accessible seats when needed, and parking. Cost and access are often what keep a family home, so we cover them, and the family just gets to go.

The ticket is the object.
Belonging is the meaning.

Sports do something unusual: strangers become “we.” We scored. We won. For families who are not often handed that feeling, stepping into the “we” says you are not an afterthought, and you are not just someone receiving a service. You are a fan. You are a kid at the game, and you get the memory too.

This work comes with responsibility. I want JJ’s Friends to be thoughtful, ethical, and worthy of the families it serves. That means listening closely, spending donations responsibly, and being open about how we do it.

I do not see JJ’s Friends as a personal achievement. I see it as a promise.
A promise to turn empathy into action.
A promise to build something that brings joy.
A promise that more children will know the front row feeling: included, seen, and welcomed.

If we can give one child and one family one good day at the game, this work mattered.

-Josh