Preston Meadow Lutheran Church in Plano is hosting the Journey of Hope Family Fun Walk at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday with humanities teacher Sarah Wiseman intimately involved.

“The Journey of Hope Family Fun Walk is something I’m organizing this year that helps raise funds for the Journey of Hope group support center, a local nonprofit,” Wiseman said. “Journey of Hope provides free grief support and group grief support to children, teens, and their parents twice a month. It’s free for anyone and it serves people all over Collin County.”

Saturday’s walk has special meaning to Wiseman as the Journey of Hope helped her when she was a teenager.

“I went when I was in high school. My brother killed himself when I was in the 9th grade, so I went to Journey of Hope in 10th grade,” Wiseman said. “It was a big difference maker because I didn’t want to talk about it. I was worried that my mom might hurt herself if she found out I was sad, so I didn’t want to make her feel bad. It wasn’t until I went to Journey of Hope and I could sit in a room with other teenagers who had lost somebody, that I started to to open up. So it’s a really good organization and it is there to help prevent grieving kids getting to a place where they can’t manage with their grief.”

Last year, the JOH had raised about $13,000 to help serve the community and Saturday’s walk is a vital to the funding of the program.

“Unfortunately in our community, in the North Texas area, there are children whose parents have died in an accident, because of illnesses, or sudden death and there’s children whose siblings have passed away. It’s hard for those children to process their grief at losing this loved one,” President of JOH Jo Ann Brooks said. “So Journey of Hope provides free support group two times a month to these children, any siblings in the family, and also the caregivers who bring them to the support group. We’re helping our community of children as they grieve the death of a loved one. That helps them to grow as individuals.”