YAMS
Youth Against Multiple Sclerosis

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About YAMS

YAMS, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that began in 2000 as an MS Walk team. The team Kadima Kares participated in the Southern California National MS Society’s Chapter of the National MS Walk at Warner Bros. Studios and had a great time. As 8th graders, Joel Dinin and Kaley Zeitouni started the team with the encouragement of their 8th grade teacher Mari Siegel. They had 48 people on the team – classmates and family members and raised over $5,000!

     The next year Rona Kremer co-captained with Joel and Kaley and the team name changed to YAMS – Youth Against Multiple Sclerosis and showed up at the MS Walk with 277 walkers raising over $17,000! One year later, in 2002, there were 200 YAMS members rasing $37,000.

     In the fall of 2002, a Board of Directors was established along with the decision of the committee of 2002 to become a non-profit organization as opposed to just an MS Walk team. This allowed YAMS to raise even more money in the 2002-2003 fiscal cycle ending with over $55,000 at the MS Walk. As well as being able to raise more money, becoming a nonprofit allowed YAMS, Inc. to focus more on spreading awareness. In 2003 alone 2,000 teens were educated about MS.

As a non profit organization, YAMS, Inc. has continued each year to have fun and successful charity and educational events throughout the year and across the country.  The mission of YAMS, Inc. is twofold: to raise money to aid in the fight against MS and to spread awareness among today’s youth about this disease.  Money raised goes to research for treatments and for a cure, to help those in the community with MS, and toward education.  To date, YAMS has raised over $200,000!  The goal of spreading awareness to today’s youth includes teaching about MS, and how kids can get involved, and empowering them to make a difference in their communities, as well as opening their minds to the lives of people with disabilities.  These goals are achieved through workshops held in middle schools, high schools, and youth groups across the country as well as at our many events, and through our website and newsletter which reaches over 1,000 families three times a year.

In the nine years that YAMS has been a non-profit, the Board of Directors has always been comprised of high school students and the legal officers are young adults.  The MS Walk team has spread to include teams in six states, and we hope it will only expand! 

Our fundraising efforts have come to a grand total of over $250,000!

National Growth!

Our organization is now national with MS Walk teams in Texas, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and California. While we are not planning on growing as a non-profit to these new states, we hope to continue to have MS Walk teams in new states all as part of YAMS in Los Angeles.  We have also started bringing our workshops nationwide as well in order to spread much more awareness.