Although The Three Hands of Hope is a relatively new organization, its origins go back over 20 years.  In 1992 Ilene Malloy was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and lost her battle to this terrible disease that same year.  Ilene loved children and would do anything to help better the life of a child. Upon her passing her family could think of no better way to keep her memory alive than to establish a fund in her name and use the proceeds from that fund to support families who had children diagnosed with a serious illness.  For the next 20 years her family has raised money through various activities and used all of the money raised to support local families.

For the first several years the money was distributed to families with seriously ill children.  However as times changed and the fund grew, so did the scope of the support it provided.  In addition to supporting the families with seriously ill children the fund also filled other needs related to supporting children in the community.  The fund provided support for a local elementary school for several years when they lost their funding for their Reading is Fundamental program, distributing books to each child in the school. The fund has provided scholarships for children to play little league baseball and midget football for those that otherwise would not have been able to afford to play.  And just recently the fund provided financial as well as other support for a local 16 year old girl to be able to attend a “Mock Prom” in January thrown specifically for her because she was not expected to survive to attend her own prom in May of the same year.

Through the association with both Pequea Valley Youth Baseball and Pequea Valley Midget football, two other alliances were made with the Ilene Malloy Memorial Fund that continue today.  The first is the annual “Danielle Delarso Community Benefit” and the second is the annual “Deez Run”.  The Community Benefit was a combined effort between the two youth sports programs that was coordinated by the Fund to do something to raise money to support local families with children diagnosed with a serious illness (sound familiar?).  Deez Run is the results of efforts by Meghan Lyons Cowan to create something to support the Delarso family after the loss of their daughter.  Meghan had done all of the up front leg work herself, but needed a group to help her pull off this huge undertaking. Since Joe Delarso had been so involved with the Midget Football program, Meghan sought his help and along with that came the help of our fund. Deez Run has actually become a part of Three Hands of Hope and the monies raised are distributed through The Danielle DeLarso scholarships at Pequea Valley High School. Proceeds are also being used to support local families at the request of the Delarso family, as they realize what an impact that local support can have on a family as they try to cope with the struggles of dealing with seriously ill child.

 

A note from the Three Hands president and founder, Tim Malloy
     Without my family my enthusiasm and drive to continue such an effort would have stopped many years ago. In 2012 I had made it known that I was planning on retiring the Organization and focus more time toward my family. Upon the urging of friends and past beneficiaries from the Fund we set out to form a new organization to carry on the work that was started by my family so many years ago. Thus founded the “Three Hands of Hope”. These three hands were inspired by Danielle Delarso and initially represented “Faith, Love and Courage”.  As the group continued to organize the three tenants of the organization became “Faith, Hope and Courage”. Certainly Love plays a large role in what we do, but we do feel that we must have Faith, we offer Hope and the children that we have worked with over the years have been tremendously courageous.