Experience Camps for Grieving Children

How do we collectively come together??? Whether you are supporting the homeless, strategizing for a rural community or like our Hiver Samira Moosavi, working within the world of children's grief, it is easy to feel like collaborations between nonprofits are challenging. Different missions, different donors, resources allocated in challenging ways. As Samira notes, how do we come together as nonprofit professionals and elevate and better our communities??? But there is something so incredibly powerful about joining in conversation and looking at each moment with another nonprofiteer as an opportunity. To learn. To share. Our world needs us more than ever - and we would argue we need each other in order to serve an ever growing population. Who is your go to nonprofiteer to chat and collaborate with??? _____________________________________________________ Samira is a passionate Clinical Grief Manager with an incredible nonprofit called Experience Camps for Grieving Children. Each day she supports children as they access grief support programs - these children have experienced the death of a parent, primary caregiver, or sibling. In many ways this conversation with Samira embodies everything we KNOW happens when a nonprofit professional is given an opportunity to share about their work. They inspire the people around them. They are reminded of how VERY cool their work is. How many lives they are changing. Death is such a taboo topic in North American society, but as a child life specialist and now in her current role, Samira is supporting children as they gain the language, understanding and community to handle an incredibly difficult life experience. Learn more about the wonderful work Experience Camps for Grieving Children is providing here - https://lnkd.in/deiNh6q4 #collaboration #inspiration #nonprofitwork #socialimpact #changemaker

Kennedy Murphy's father passed away from a heart attack when she was just 5 years old. To help her cope with the overwhelming loss, she started attending a "grief camp" called Experience Camps for Grieving Children. Her time at camp helped her understand her own grief and has inspired her to team up with an incredible group of teens to create Grief Sucks Dot Com, a new digital platform for grieving teens. Kennedy is now 16 years old and will be speaking at End Well in November! We are so excited that she'll be joining us. Will you? Get tickets at https://lnkd.in/geptXYfw

Joy and grief belong together. For Mackenzie Galloway-Cole, joining our Adult Grief Retreat this summer allowed her (and 100 other grievers) to build community, be silly, and, most importantly -- grieve openly. Thank you, CNN and Francesca Street, for highlighting the story of one of our participants at our FTA Adult Grief Camp program this year! https://lnkd.in/g-aXCxfG

Did you know that 6.3 million kids in this country will experience the death of a parent or sibling by age 18? The reason we know this is because of Judi's House/JAG Institute, a community-based nonprofit bereavement center for children. We are grateful for the in-depth research they do that helps everyone working to support grieving children better understand the scale of childhood grief. We are also proud to be part of their 2023 "Childhood Bereavement Changemakers." Thanks to this program, we were able to redesign our camper surveys which help us better understand the exact impact our programs have on grieving children. This will ensure that we can enhance our programming and the ways we support our campers, for years to come! Thank you Judi's House/JAG Institute for your expertise, time, and support!

We’re proud to announce that Lauren Zima, TV host, celebrity, and four-time Emmy winner, was named to our Board of Directors! For Lauren, the mission is personal: “My dad died while I was in college, and the loss changed my family and I forever,” she says. “But I’ve also grown from grief, and speaking out about the grief experience has helped. From the moment I heard about Experience Camps and its mission, I knew I had to get involved.” https://lnkd.in/eJZmR-Fc

The last thing your grieving child needs is to have gender stereotypes thrust upon them at one of the hardest points in their life. Here are 5 ways to support your grieving child when they're told to "step up." Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eSNawhv2

We've heard from so many kids and adults that, "sorry for your loss," doesn't work for them. Instead, try these three other options. Remember, it's all about continually showing up, not just checking a box for saying something.

I had to capture the memory before it evaporated into the light of day. Here's my recap of the day Experience Camps for Grieving Children was recognized during New York Yankees #HOPEWeek. https://lnkd.in/eMg2FnvF

Starting with camp. One of our goals is to expand our camp reach to more kids in under-resourced communities. We strive to increase equity and accessibility for Black and Brown campers by increasing our recruitment efforts for campers and volunteers of color. To that end, we opened our new camp program in Maryland last summer (see picture on top of blog post), which allowed us to serve communities deeply in need of more grief support. This includes those in the D.C. and Baltimore area. We welcomed 77 campers (74% were campers of color) and 61 staff and volunteers (49% were volunteers of color). We also ran a series of in-person “Playing through Grief” events that 1) introduced families to the opportunity of our overnight camp programs, and 2) provided grieving kids an opportunity to learn how to navigate their feelings, build coping skills, and play with other grieving children. These free workshops allow us to build relationships with local partners that expand our reach to under-resourced communities including Baltimore, Washington D.C., and Atlanta. Last year, we set a goal of 500 campers of color (40% across all programs) in order to drive our recruitment efforts. Across our programs collectively, we still have some work to do. We enrolled 438 campers of color, 38% of our campers, falling just shy of our ambitious goal. For our full report, follow the link! https://lnkd.in/gUTnPzZK

This past week we were thrilled to present at the NACG Symposium in Denver on GRIEF SUCKS, and how we worked every step of the way alongside teens to create this digital platform. It was great to hear how professionals are using our resource with teens and their community. #NACGConference2024 Brianne Overton FT, LPC-S,NCC Michelle Cove Jesse Moss Samira Moosavi