James and the best future possible!

Hi, it's Jesse and Patricia, and we are reaching out to you beautiful humans to ask for your help with our extraordinary boy James. Our goal is to raise $50,000.00 towards paying for intensive therapy and specialized education.

On February 18, 2012, James was born into this world. After performing several tests and an intense one-week hospital stay, we were told he has an extremely rare genetic disorder (16q22.1 microdeletion syndrome)

This disorder has affected only five children known worldwide; our sweet boy is one of them. Due to the rarity of this disorder, there is not enough research to determine precisely why and how this happened to James. He has also been diagnosed with Global Developmental Delay and Autism.

It has been a challenging ten years navigating the public school system and various programs. As you may or may not know, our public school system is very limited in the support they can provide to children with special needs and most times; special needs children don't receive the level of education that they require. James is 10 years old and is at an educational level relative to a child who is in JK. He is unable to read and write and has minimal communication skills.

As his parents, we have always tried different avenues to help James; however, we need to take further action to help him become the best version of himself. We aim to take a new path so that he can successfully learn to function independently in society and socialize among his family, friends and community.

James is a loving, caring, funny ten-year-old boy who loves playing video games and swimming. He also enjoys hanging out with his parents and siblings. He is a massive Jim Carrey fan and often imitates his favorite lines and scenes from his movies.

After thorough research, we came across the organization called The Shining Through Centre for Children with Autism (shiningthrough.ca). It is a charitable organization and recognized leader in the field of autism, providing service in therapy, education, research and awareness to children, youth and their families. Shining Through provides intensive, comprehensive, individualized therapeutic and educational programs to each learner based on evidence-based treatment. After meeting with Shining Through, we knew this was a perfect fit for James.

We have an opportunity to enroll him beginning in September; however, Shining Through is a privatized charitable organization, and government assistance is insufficient to cover the cost of this intensive therapy. The average tuition for privatized treatment and education for children with special needs is approximately $40,000.00 or more per year. We ask for a donation to allow James to learn and grow in this incredible opportunity.

It has been a difficult road for us as a family, and we have done our absolute best to provide for our son with his medical/therapy needs, but it has come to a hard decision to ask our friends and family for help.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know our special guy. We appreciate any donation towards helping our son. Any help you can give will mean the world to us, especially James. We believe everyone should have the chance to learn, grow and thrive!

If you cannot donate at this time, we understand entirely and appreciate everyone's situation is different; we would like to request that you help share this link for others to see.

God bless!