The Project Hope Foundation was started by a sixteen year old girl named Kara Haynes in August of 2015. When she first began the non profit organization, she had a very specific purpose for Project Hope in mind. She, herself, had dealt with addiction, depression, self-injury, eating disorders and anxiety in her early years as a teenager. Upon nearing her second sobriety "birthday" she decided that she never wanted anyone that was struggling with mental illness to feel shamed into silence, so because no one else was starting a conversation about it, she decided to start a movement within her own community. In 2014, she began a club at her school, Center Grove High School, located in Greenwood, Indiana. From there, she went on to begin speaking at her church and other small local gatherings, but she was struggling to come up with a name that sounded passionate enough. Then, at one of her club meetings while she was describing everything she wanted the organization to be (specifially the fact that she wanted it to be hope for the hopeless), one of her friends, Ross, offered up the name Project Hope. The rest, as they say, is history. (But, not quite.) 

 

Kara still had a long way to go before she could convince people to listen to a sixteen year old and would be able to call her small club of twelve a national organization (and she's still working at it), but she thanks God every day for how He has worked within her and opened the doors to her future.