In this week’s Close Up, we met a mother who founded a grassroots non-profit organization to use an action-packed sport to transform lives.

When Crys Worley’s son, Sasha, became one of more than 3.5 million Americans to be diagnosed with autism, she sought out to find an activity that he could participate in with other children, particularly his brother, Fallon.

In her search, she found that skateboarding stimulated a significant difference in her son’s behavior.

“Sasha had so many issues – just behavior, sensory, OCD, and Fallon just put up with it all the time. But when they started skateboarding together, it was interaction, instead of parallel,” Worley said.

Worley began to organize skating events for other autistic children, events that eventually evolved into A-skate Foundation – a non-profit organization that hosts skateboarding clinics for autistic children and their families across the United States.

“The more that we were around these kids, the more we saw that they were making progress with eye contact, language, social skills, and just engaging in an activity longer than just a couple minutes at a time. It was an hour, and that’s almost unheard of for a lot of these kids,” Worley said.

But despite A-skate’s success, Worley said she wants the organization to stay small and focused on one goal – helping kids.

“My goal with A-Skate is not to blow up and be this huge franchised organization with chapters everywhere and lots of staff, because I don’t want staff. I’m not even staff because I volunteer my time, as well as everyone else who is here, and helps the kids,” Worley said. “I want A-SKATE to be a volunteer organization where 100 percent of what we do goes back to events and helping these kids.”

Follow Crys Worley on Twitter @CrysWorley