Teaming up with an old friend

Friends Jacob Weber, a seventh grader at Pin Oak Middle School, and Noah Diano, a seventh grader at Pershing Middle School, (from left) shared their bar mitzvahs and community-service project.

We have been friends since we were 5. In third grade, our parents decided we should have our bar mitzvahs together. In fifth grade, we were given our dates: Feb. 27-28, 2015. Yes, we studied and planned for two years! We celebrated our bar mitzvah together in February and had a blast.

Part of our preparations was to do a mitzvah project (a good deed) in our community. We both played for West U Little League Baseball last year and volunteered for the Challenger program. The West University Challenger Division is a program for girls and boys ages 5-22 who are mentally and/or physically challenged. We assist them by acting as guides for the blind, pushing wheelchair-using players around the bases, and helping the Challengers bat or field the ball.

We thought it was fun and a good cause so we decided that would be a great mitzvah project. We discussed it with our moms and Kirsten Leach, the Challenger coordinator, and they agreed. Once we had our charity selected, we needed to figure out how we were going to raise money. We decided on a lemonade stand/bake sale.

The first thing we did was email our families and friends to let them know about our mitzvah project and how they could support our cause. In preparation, we baked cookies and brownies, with some help from our moms. We made posters, set up a table at the Southside Place City Hall and talked with family, friends and others from our community who came and supported our cause. It was a great day.

We raised over $2,500! The money will be used for uniforms for the kids, maintaining the fields, equipment and trophies. One kid from every team gets a $200 grant for school, therapy or doctors’ appointments.

We were so happy that we could help kids play baseball who might not have had a chance to play otherwise. We found it rewarding to see how these boys and girls, regardless of their own disabilities, were excited to play baseball. We are proud of ourselves for raising money for such a good cause.

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