GILFORD — Students at Gilford High School are turning a school project into a nonprofit organization, seeking to support the mental health of children who are hospitalized.

Operation Smile was born through students engaged with the GHS DECA program, which, as part of a broader movement, teaches principles of business, finance, hospitality, management and marketing.

But the students in Gilford are taking their education one step further, by creating something tangible that could make serious impacts in their community. The focus: supporting the mental and emotional health of hospital patients.

For Amelia Costea, president of Operation Smile, it’s personal.

“I personally have struggled with that,” she said Wednesday afternoon. She was at one point paralyzed from the waist down for four m

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