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Tele-Hope was officially launched on December 6, 2022, but the dream began long before that.

 

Since 2018, I knew I wanted to start a nonprofit. Tele-Hope has always had one goal: to create hope for others. Not the vague kind, but the tangible hope you feel when someone truly sees you. The kind you feel when someone shows up for you. The kind you experience when someone genuinely listens. This vision drove me to play football in college instead of soccer—to gain exposure and a platform for a bigger purpose. With this platform, I could expand my vision and help people feel seen, heard, and believed in.

 

From the start, playing sports in college was a long shot for me. As the son of immigrant parents, the only acceptable path was becoming a doctor. There wasn't much support, at least not the kind I needed. In high school, I tried to navigate a seemingly meaningless void of finding meaning as a teenager. My friends were there, but like any stubborn teenager, I didn't talk to them about what mattered. I didn't even know how. Even surrounded by people who felt more like brothers than friends, I felt alone.

 

On December 19, 2019, after a series of setbacks—nothing monumental by life's standards (recruiting challenges, a breakup, family issues) but suffocating for an 18-year-old—I contemplated ending my life. Feeling like a failure, I drove into the mountains at 147 mph at 2 AM, not caring about the consequences, wanting to make a suicide look like an accident.

 

When I got up to the mountain, something stopped me through the tears and anger. I pulled over. Looked up. Cried some more, cursed even more, and then, despite my better judgment, I tested God. I asked Him to show me a sign. Something real. Something I had never seen before. I closed my eyes. Prayed. Waited. I waited until a car passed by because I wanted to know I was not the only one driving so late in the mountains. That car finally passed. I opened my eyes. There it was. My first shooting star. My sign of hope.

 

In that moment, I knew I needed to be part of something bigger than myself, and that's when Tele-Hope began.

 

That's where the name and the logo came from. Sometimes, when everything gets a little blurry, we need to stop and open our eyes to see that hope still exists. Sometimes we need a telescope, or sometimes we just need a friend or a teammate—anyone who can help us see something more.

 

At Tele-Hope, we believe it's never too late to connect with someone or to search for meaning. We want young people, ages 10 to 24, to know they're not alone. We believe in the research showing that feeling cared about and having even one genuine friend can change everything, and that's what we set out to provide. That's why we teach what it truly means to be there for each other—what it means to be a real friend—before things get too heavy. And for the moments when doing anything feels like climbing a mountain, we show up, lean in, listen, and seek help together.

 

That's what Tele-Hope is all about.

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