An initiative that got its start in State College is now lifting the morale of children nationwide — and it’s about to get a big boost.
The Jared Box Project, a program devoted to sending care packages to children with cancer, is extending its reach thanks to help from a national organization.
A Jared Box is a shoebox-sized plastic container filled with toys and games. More than 150,000 Jared Boxes have reportedly been distributed to hospitals in 47 states as well as in four other countries.
The Jared Box Project was recently selected as the target service project by the National Society of Collegiate scholars (NCSC).
The NSCS has over 300 chapters nationwide, so the Jared Box program will have the resources to extend its reach beyond the 200 hospitals it already assists.
All this month, NSCS chapters will be making and delivering Jared Boxes to hospitals all over the country, so kids will have something to smile about during the holidays.
“My goal is that this is going to put us over the top,” Jared Box Project Spokeswomen Cindy Kolarik says. “Every year they (NSCS) they ask members for a project and submit ideas and this year I was contacted for it.”
A Jared Box is a shoebox-sized plastic container filled with toys and games. It’s named for a State College child. Jared McMullin was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor in 1999 at the age of five. He passed away a year later, on Nov. 12, 2000.
During his yearlong fight with the disease, Jared would routinely bring a backpack of toys with him whenever he stayed in the hospital.
“He was wise and fun-loving beyond his years,” Kolarik says. “When he would bring his backpack with him, he would notice that the other kids didn’t have things to do so he shared with them. That was just his personality.”
After Jared passed away his parents realized that sending similar packages to other children would be the perfect way to honor his memory.
The initiative started with Jared’s preschool, Our Lady of Victory in State College. More than 13 years later, the children of Our Lady Victory still participate by assembling Jared Boxes every spring.
Principal Samantha Weakland, whose daughter Emma attended preschool with Jared, says she is still amazed by the way the program has grown over the years.
“I’m tearing up just thinking about it,” Weakland says. “It’s touching to see how much it has grown and it’s incredible someone would choose this as a service project.”
These boxes aren’t just being made by preschools either. Boy scout troops make them and colleges are prominently involved as well. According to Kolarik, the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State has a group of students involved in the Jared Box Project.
Now that the program has become so popular, the boxes no longer need to be restricted to kids with cancer. Children sent to the hospital after an accident often receive them.
“We have students here, who when they go to the emergency room they get a Jared Box, Weakland says. “They’re always so thankful.”
Sometimes the patients of Jared boxes aren’t even visiting a hospital or dealing with an illness or injury themselves.
With so many boxes on hand, Mount Nittany Medical Center is able to send them to pediatric physicians and even siblings of hopsital patients.
“Wherever we have children that access the health system, we provide Jared Boxes,” Mount Nittany Medical Center Director Kim Neely says. “Sometimes siblings are very worried about their brothers or sisters, and sometimes there’s jealousy. Whatever comforts a family we want to be able to provide.”
Even with the project’s tremendous growth, Kolarik feels it can continue to improve.
“It’s always been happening throughout the country,” Kolarik says. “But now it’s really going to be able to spread to even more hospitals.”
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