NTEE Code:
O- Youth Development
P- Human Services
F- Mental Health, Crisis Intervention
W- Public, Society Benefit
Mission Statement:
The mission of the Children's Grief Center is to provide a safe and supportive environment where children, teens, young adults and their families can share experiences and feelings while grieving a death.
Programs:
Clients at The Children’s Grief Center (CGC) are children ages 5 & up who have experienced the death of a caregiver or sibling. Support is also provided for the child’s current caregivers, who may be a surviving spouse, parents who’ve lost a child, or grandparents suddenly raising orphaned children.
CGC is the only program dedicated to bereaved children in Central New Mexico. Families have come from as far away as Los Alamos and Encino, but most families live in Bernalillo, Sandoval, or Valencia Counties.
Support Groups are designed to give the child the opportunity to talk, draw, write, play or act out their experiences and to process these experiences with others who are going through the same thing. Group activities are appropriate to each age group, but may include an art project (drawing pictures about the funeral, the last memory, etc.), or a puppet show choreographed by the kids, reading children’s stories about different kinds of death, writing personal stories about the death, etc. Group guidelines let each child know they can always “pass” if an activity is something they are not ready for.
Families are provided with a complementary dinner before groups start. The dinner is important because it gives the families 30 minutes to be together, and to nourish themselves before going into a group where they face what is probably the worst thing to happen in their young lives.
Board and Volunteer Positions:
Accepts inquiries about volunteering
Accepts inquiries about board member positions
Nonprofit Status:
Has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the IRS
Is registered as a Nonprofit Corporation with the State of New Mexico