​Hoboken High School student Alex Walker has lived in Hoboken, New Jersey his whole life. One day while he was still in elementary school and walking around town with his parents, he said something that caught his parents off guard.  To paraphrase, Alex said he not only recognized the same people in need around Hoboken from seeing them many times, he also noted that the number of needy people seemed to be growing. He asked his parents why people need to ask for money, and why some of them he saw sleeping in Church Square Park in the morning on his way to school didn't seem to have a home or a family.

 

After a tough conversation for a seven year old about homelessness and economic disparity in a city that has so many "rich" families with beautiful homes and money, he realized in his own way that that giving someone a few dollars or something to eat might help them today, but what about tomorrow?

 

That's when the idea for Hoboken Helps was born. Alex's parents told him that there are organizations in town that are designed to help every day. The question became, "How can we help those organizations so they can help more people?" Although too young to do anything without help from grown-ups, Alex's sensitivity and passion inspired his parents and teenage brother, who rallied around the idea of connecting the people in town who need help, with people who can provide more than just a one-time handout.

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His parents and big brother setup the first Hoboken Helps website, with lots of feedback and suggestions from Alex ("Can it be more blue? More pictures! Don't use so many confusing words.") By the time Alex started high school, he had taken over the ongoing support of Hoboken Helps from his big brother, who graduated college and was now living and working outside Hoboken. Alex made it his own by adding functionality to allow individual volunteers and donors in town to go to one place to find all of the non-profit organizations they can help. He overhauled the website, but kept plenty of blue.

 

At 7 years old, Alex didn't know exactly how to help but he understood the problem. Hoboken Helps got off the ground because he asked others to help him help them. Now, he's running the site on his own part-time, while he focuses on being a full-time student and a three-sport varsity athlete.

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