In 1988 at the University of Kansas, Patrick Hughes Jr. met a young man named Jay outside his fraternity. The two started talking about music and soon they realized they had several other common interests.

Their friendship developed over the next few months, and eventually Jay was invited to join Hughes’ fraternity. On the surface, there was nothing out of the ordinary with their friendship.

But for Jay, who is autistic, his friendship with Hughes changed his life.

“After a while, people just became really comfortable with Jay,” said Evanston Natural Ties program manager Jocelyn Dubach. “He was just like another one of the guys.”

As word of Hughes’ friendship with Jay spread throughout campus, more students began reaching out to people with disabilities. And when Hughes graduated, he returned to his hometown of Evanston to found Natural Ties in 1991.

Natural Ties is a non-profit organization dedicated to starting friendships between people with and without disabilities. Today, Evanston houses the national office for nine other chapters located in college communities nationwide. In addition to four upcoming chapters, current locations include Purdue University, Eastern Illinois University and the University of Kansas.

“Natural Ties sticks out as a unique place,” said Medill sophomore Emily Gorovsky, who joined the organization Fall Quarter. Gorovsky said she learned about the group through student publicity and her job in the Student Community Service Office. Before then, she had “never heard of an organization that was about fostering friendships, not about volunteering for a day or mentoring.”

Gorovsky said Special Olympics, which will take place at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook on Sunday, provides a starting point for meeting athletes with disabilities. But she said Natural Ties hopes to develop long-term friendships on a variety of levels.

“Special Olympics has a different dimension, which is to train athletes,” she said. “The point of Natural Ties is not only to foster friendships but to maintain them.”

Dubach also said reciprocal friendship is the core of the Natural Ties program.

“We offer structured activities,” she said, “but we promote people hanging out on their own time and just doing regular activities that you would do normally.”

Gorovsky said her friendship with Jessica Gould, a 23-year-old with autism from Glenview, “is just like any other friendship. … Jessica makes me laugh all the time – she’s hysterical. I’m being a friend to her, but I’ve gained a friend, too.”

Gould and Gorovsky talk on the phone every day, in addition to writing e-mails and spending time together on the weekends.

Gould’s mother, Arleen Gould, said she believes her daughter has benefited greatly. Arleen Gould said Natural Ties impresses her because it provides people with disabilities “a peer to talk about things and to go places” with so they can feel independent from parental care.

“It’s turned out to be a really good thing,” she said, and Jessica “has met some great friends.”

Other Natural Ties activities in Evanston have included monthly meetings at Norris University Center and baseball games. Natural Ties also holds annual leadership and national conferences that allow members from each of the chapters to coordinate events and generate ideas.

Fifteen NU students are currently involved with the program, Dubach said, and she is working with Gorovsky and other students to expand interest.

“People are already involved in so many things,” Dubach said, “but it’s not really that much more time (to volunteer through Natural Ties). It’s just making a choice to include someone in what you’re doing.”

Natural Ties in Evanston has matched about 50 volunteers with people with disabilities, but more than 20 people are still on a waiting list to be paired with someone.

“Evanston has a pretty large disabled population, but you might not even recognize them,” Gorovsky said. “They hold jobs here; they go to school; they work at Northwestern. But they might not know how or have the resources to reach out to you. And because you don’t know they’re there, you can’t reach out to them.”

Natural Ties differs from student volunteer organizations because it is located off campus and is not widely recognized by the student body, Gorovsky said.

“We don’t have the base pool of volunteers or established sites and guidelines,” she said, “but one of our main goals is to expand interest” in the program. The Evanston chapter will hold a free picnic in Wilmette on June 10 to recruit more volunteers.