Nonprofit swinging for the fences
10-year-old hopes to help other kids with special needs reach goals
Nalah Best has faced more than her share of challenges in her first decade, overcoming adversity to compile an impressive résumé that includes public speaking, launching her own organic bath bomb company and creating a nonprofit, the Nalah’s Dreamwork Foundation.
The 10-year-old with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a brittle bone disease, hopes she can help other kids with special needs accomplish their goals.
“It has been an absolute whirlwind,” Nalah’s mother, Erika-Michelle Best, said. “We have been from doctors saying she won’t survive five minutes outside of the womb, to her surpassing and overcoming insurmountable odds of the most severe kind of brittle bone disease that there is.”
Nalah depended on a ventilator and a tracheotomy until just before her second birthday. She uses a wheelchair and has un
dergone multiple surgeries, including having rods inserted into her upper and lower legs.
“Nalah’s Dreamwork Foundation is her personal foundation she wanted to start to help mentor kids with different abilities who have a passion and drive to do motivational speaking and start their own businesses,” Best said. “Those are things she’s done herself, and she figured, ‘What better way to serve the community than to help them do the same things?’ ”
The foundation, created in April, held its first big fundraising event Saturday, a softballthemed fundraiser at Ray Holbrook Park in Dickinson.
One of Nalah’s best friends, Emma Blount, and her Momentum select softball team, donated the equipment and helped run the event. The girls met in the first days of kindergarten at Big Colony Elementary School.
“When she came in, I just automatically wanted to be friends with her,” Emma said.
The two still get together regularly, and Nalah spent most of Saturday in the dugout with the Momentum players.
The early stages of the foundation have been mostly about networking with people and sharing the foundation’s mission.
“We’re bringing the community together and really helping them understand that there is a need for this because so many people with different abilities, they have things they want to do, and there’s just not always an outlet for them,” said Best, the president of Nalah’s Dreamwork Foundation. “So we want to be the outlet, we want to be to pioneer more programs that help support that kind of mission.”
The foundation plans to start a mentorship program in 2020. It plans to use the money raised to provide the resources necessary for children with special needs to learn about and practice public speaking and other skills.
During the home-run derby portion of Saturday’s event, coaches, friends, relatives, children with special needs and Momentum players donated money to get 10 pitches. Nalah was wheeled up to home plate, where she took her swings as well.
Best said the first big event is a learning experience, but she was extremely pleased overall with the turnout and the event. The foundation plans to make the softball tournament an annual event. It is also planning a “walk and wheel” fundraiser for the fall.
“What we would like to do is more events like this where we can actually sponsor children with special needs to be participants,” said Nalah’s Dreamwork Foundation board member Jennifer Gongora. “We’re still thinking of more innovative ways that we can help families and children build on what it is they want to do.”
Nalah is currently homeschooled, but she plans to return to school soon. Nalah expressed excitement about her life. She recently found out her family will be taking a trip to Disney World, and she enjoys going to Texas City and helping her grandparents who are building a house there while playing alongside her cousins.
“Watching her grow up has been the biggest honor and privilege,” Best said. “I see every day the lives that she changes with what she does.”
“Nalah’s Dreamwork Foundation is her personal foundation she wanted to start to help mentor kids with different abilities who have a passion and drive to do motivational speaking and start their own businesses. Those are things she’s done herself, and she figured, ‘What better way to serve the community than to help them do the same things?’ ”
Erika-Michelle Best, Nalah’s mother