Youth Venture

CHAMP - Chronic Health: Adolescents Making Progress is a program meant to empower young people with chronic illnesses.

Our story comes from all different directions coming together onto a single path. Nine years ago Hannah Martin, CHAMP President, was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. At around that same time, a few states away, Dana Sperber, CHAMP VP, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Through years of coping and adjusting to living with our illnesses we both ended up at separate summer camps pertaining to our respective diseases. Both of us had been involved in the national foundations around our illnesses and helping to fundraise and advocate on that level. This past summer (2007), while Hannah was volunteering as a counselor at Camp Oasis (a summer camp for kids with Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis) she developed a friendship with a fellow counselor who was a member of TALC - The Adolescent Leadership Council, at Brown University. She described the program and how it changed her life - being able to directly help kids and teens going through what she went through, guiding them along a pathway of leadership and success despite the difficulties of living with a chronic illness. It was also during this summer that Hannah and Dana were randomly paired together as suite-mates at NYU. In getting to know each other and being able to relate on the level of illness (in both positive and negative ways), a strong bond was formed. The combination of wanting to take a program like TALC to NYU and the support of each other came together and Hannah and Dana knew it was the right time to pursue action in developing such an amazing organization. We wanted to be the difference; we wanted to be CHAMP.