By Stephanie Fasano and Jenn Palmer
When Bobby Palmieri lost his dad at age 9 to a massive heart attack, he wanted to make a difference. He created silicon bracelets that said “Have A Heart” and sold them to raise $2,000 for the American Heart Association. Nine years later, he became a freshman at Quinnipiac University and wanted to bring “Have A Heart” back to life.
“Have A Heart is a great way to honor him [his father] and part of the major concept of Have A heart is taking this negative and turning it into something positive,” Palmieri said.
The goal of “Have A Heart” is to help other students with financial burdens from losing a parent to heart disease. He began with raising money on the website Indigogo to create a scholarship for a student of his choice. “I wanted to do the $10,000 scholarship and be done with it but after getting a few donations I loved the idea of helping others.” He added, “I’m not going to set a set amount of numbers. I’d like to do as many events as possible and see how much money those raise and then go from there,” Palmieri said.
He is trying to create as many scholarships as possible. “We just launched the new website. There’s a new blog. Eventually people will be able to donate to the site. Buy t-shirts, hats, and stay up to date on all the events were going to do. Were going to do events on other campuses not just Quinnipiac’s and just go from there,” Palmieri said.
In the next few months, he would also like to give out four more scholarships to help student who are struggling financially because of their family situation.
“I just feel like when something bad happens you have the ability to react how you want to. At first that was hard for me to understand but as I grew older and more mature I realized it is what it is and I can react and actually turn this into, not a positive thing but made a positive change and I look to continue to help people and I think people should do the same,” Palmieri said.
