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Experience Camps for Grieving Children

We believe that every child deserves to live a life rich with possibility.

We are a nonprofit that champions the nation’s 5.6 million U.S. children who will experience the death of a parent or sibling by the time they reach 18. We run a network of no-cost camps and other programming that help grieving children thrive by growing their coping resources and resilience, and create content to help build a more grief-sensitive culture.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2009

Established

-

Children

1

Countries
Target group
Students
Updated
April 2022
"We must let young people know that it's healthy and even healing to have moments of silliness while grieving. We can smile we catch kids in a moment of joy and say, "I love you seeing you laugh.'"

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

5.6 million American children will go through the death of a sibling or parent. Research shows they are far more likely to be at risk for mental health challenges, academic decline, substance misuse, and even early death. Grief in childhood can undermine a child’s future – or lead to remarkable resilience. We believe that every grieving child deserves to live a life rich with possibility.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Our flagship program is a no-cost, week-long, overnight summer camp for thousands of kids who have experienced the death of a parent, sibling, or primary caregiver – backed by year-round resources. This clinically-informed program & distinctive peer-to-peer model fosters the coping skills & community key to fostering post-traumatic growth.

This spring we are scaling the virtual space we're creating for youth within one of the most popular online games, Minecraft. By partnering with them, we're able to open up the space we create to kids across the country who've experienced the death of someone close to them.

Additionally we are launching a YouTube channel called The Grief Club, built with our Youth Advisory Board, to normalize grief and help young people navigate it together. It is filled with celebrity interviews who openly share their grief journey, teens talking openly about how it feels to mourn; reviews about TV/Movies that focus on grief, and more.

How has it been spreading?

Our social media has been growing across all platforms, and particularly TikTok, which we launched in February 2022: We have over 6,300 followers and approximately 200K likes, over 1 M views, and are rapidly growing. There is clearly a hunger for candid, thoughtful, even humorous conversations around normalizing and navigating grief. We also have 10K subscribers to our monthly newsletter.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

By May, we will have all of the information on how kids can get involved with Minecraft, and the link our The Grief Club channel on YouTube. In the meantime, we are accepting campers and volunteer counselors at experiencecamps.org, and anyone can visit our TikTok account @experiencecamps to hop in the candid conversations.

Spread of the innovation

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