One donor. Eight lives. Twenty-nine entries.
In April, senior Mountain Lion Television (MLTV) students Aiden Aiken, Parker Huey-Kish, Adilee Scott and Sydney Wilber created a 90-second video about organ donation. The team submitted their work to the Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness (OTDA) statewide public service announcement competition.
“This year, we wanted to make it a little different and hit home to viewers,” Aiken said. “We thought, why not use the Lowes? They’re from our hometown, and their story is pretty incredible, with their dynamic in general. We thought highlighting their story not only would leave a great impact, but it would also really help us have a better chance at winning.”
By May, the students’ video was chosen as the 2026 winning submission.
“It’s a good testament to our work,” Aiken said. “Winning [the competition] sophomore year, we didn’t really think much about it, but then when we entered again our junior year and lost. That’s when it kind of set in, like, ‘We need to up our work’ and ‘Oh, this isn’t good enough. We need to improve.’ Getting to do it again this year, fixing our mistakes and where we were weak to provide a winning video was very meaningful to how we’ve worked on this.”
OTDA awarded the students $3000 along with an invitation to the OTDA spring conference in State College which occurred on May 15. The high school received a permanent engraved trophy and a traveling trophy commemorating this achievement.
“We were moved, because it truly shows how the way we highlighted [the Lowes’] story was so enjoyable and won over the judges,” Aiken said. “We made a better impact on the organ donation movement.”
The students’ submission, “The Power of One: A Legacy Beyond the Classroom,” focused on the impact of organ donation for James and Jen Lowe, two Altoona educators, whose lives were directly influenced by organ donation.
“I would have never met [James Lowe] if he didn’t get his first organ because he actually had his first kidney and pancreas transplant back in the 1990s, before I ever met him,” English teacher Jen Lowe said. “I would have potentially never met him if there hadn’t been this donor service, because his first donor was not a live donor. It came from somebody who was killed in a motor vehicle accident. But kidneys don’t last forever, so he needed a second one. I’m very happy to be able to promote organ donation. Not necessarily everyone can be a live donor, which I did, because that’s asking a lot for people, but at the same time, it was really an easy process, and I don’t have any life changes whatsoever.”
Aiken wrote a script for James and Jen Lowe to share their story, and MLTV invested in new technology to create an authentic and professional recording.
“For us, lighting is always important,” MLTV adviser Michael Baker said. “Once the team communicated with me what they wanted to do, I ordered some soft box lighting that allowed us to light the area, and the interviews with the Lowes were out in the hallway, so we were able to bring our portable lights in to make it lit correctly. The other thing [the team] wanted help with is they didn’t want [the Lowes] wearing lapel mics. They wanted to look more natural, so I just assisted them in how they set up and rigged a boom microphone so microphones were above their heads out of the shot.”
The students’ video in conjunction with the OTDA project hopes to assist teenagers in making informed decisions about organ donation.
“I hope [the video] encourages everybody to realize that organ donation is something that is very much needed in our society,” Jen Lowe said. “A lot of people are on the transplant list who need a kidney. Specifically, the numbers have drastically increased. I’m hoping some people who are inspired by our story hits a little close to home, since it is something people can relate to teachers that they’ve had, and hopefully can’t imagine their lives without these people, and so they want to participate in the organ donors themselves.”
