Long Island teen to appear on Nickelodeon’s ‘HALO Effect’
Raymond Mohler Jr., pictured with actress Sydney Park, will be featured on the Nickelodeon TV show "The HALO Effect" on March 14. Credit: Nickelodeon / Craig Blankenhorn
Raymond Mohler Jr., 18, of Lynbrook, will be featured in the Nickelodeon show “The HALO Effect” at 8:30 p.m. Monday, March 14. HALO stands for Helping And Leading Others.
Each half-hour episode profiles a young activist making a positive change in his or her community and inspiring others to do the same. The monthly series grew out of the annual Nickelodeon “HALO Awards” show hosted by Nick Cannon.
Mohler, a senior at Lynbrook Senior High School, started the Little Saint Nick Foundation, dedicated to making hospital stays an easier experience for kids. A Nickelodeon crew filmed Mohler in November, with actress Sydney Park giving him a $10,000 check for the foundation. They also filmed him planning and executing a party for kids in the pediatric ward at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children in Bayside.
Mohler is excited for the episode to air. “We might have a little viewing party,” he says.
When Mohler was 4, he was in Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park with a rare hip condition that has since been corrected. He realized how difficult it was to be in the hospital with nothing to do. On his 5th birthday — which happens to also be Christmas Eve — he asked if he could take half of his presents to the hospital and give them out to kids. He was nicknamed “Little St. Nick.”
Soon after, Raymond and his family formed the Little Saint Nick Foundation, which collects money and gifts to donate around the holidays, brings sports personalities to visit hospitalized kids, provides emergency room gift bags to hospitals and more. The donations go to several Long Island hospitals, including Cohen and Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, Mohler says.
For more information on the charity, visit littlestnick.org.
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
