Invite you to…
How Parents Can Help Children
Cope with Grief and Loss
Language, Tools and Strategies

Thursday May 10, 2012 • 6:30 P.M.
Arlington Town Hall
700 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington

This educational workshop is open to anyone who would like to better understand their child’s grief. The prior loss of a loved one is not required.

There is no charge to attend and light refreshments will be served. The parking lot behind town hall
(on Academy St.) will be available for your convenience. 

Please RSVP: director@devitofuneralhomes.com or (781) 643-5610

This workshop will be presented by Deborah Rivlin, Director of Education & Training at The Children’s Room. She has over 30 years experience helping grieving children, teens and families. Deborah was an integral part of Boston Medical Center’s Good Grief program from 1988 until 2008 providing in-service trainings and crisis intervention. Deborah developed and served as the director of The CIRCLE, a comprehensive family bereavement support program for 10 years, including support programs for children and adults who had a loved one die on 9/11/01.

Click here to download a pdf flyer for this workshop.

We are so glad if you were able to join us at our annual breakfast. It was wonderful to share this year’s inspiring program with so many

"See the Sun" performed by Alex and Nick

Courtney's inspiring testimony

caring friends of The Children’s Room! The enormous outpouring of support will clearly make a difference in the lives of grieving children and families this year. As we grow, we envision adding family support groups, starting more school-based groups, and expanding our educational outreach. If you were not able to attend the breakfast this year, but would like contribute, you can make a secure, online donation here. We hope you’ll join us next year!

We are deeply appreciative of the support of our community, enabling The Children’s Room to continue to offer vital and life-changing services to grieving families.

TCR staff members Kim & Donna cheer on Anne at mile 18

Members of the TCR community gathered and cheered on Chris, Deana, Jill, Anne, and Courtney from the sidelines at mile 18 on race day. We are so proud to be part of their inspiring accomplishment! Their tireless commitment raised crucial funds for programs serving grieving children, teens, and families.

The Miles + Memories Team sprinted past their fundraising goal and raised over $50,000 in support for The Children’s Room!

You can read more in this MassNonprofit news feature on TCR’s marathon success.

Thank you to everyone who supported our Miles + Memories Marathon Team!

2012 Miles + Memories Team: Deana Hickey, Anne Scharpf, Courtney Silva, and Chris Ellsasser (not pictured: Jill Hurley)

After months of intense training, our Miles + Memories Team is less than a week away from running the Boston Marathon! Learn more about our runners and what inspires them to take on this life-altering challenge for The Children’s Room.

The Children’s Room recently hosted an auction evening to benefit our marathon runners. Our cozy house was filled with energy and camaraderie as we all celebrated our five runners and reflected on the importance of The Children’s Room’s mission to serve grieving children, teens, and families. Thanks to some amazing volunteers, donations from local businesses, and the involvement of our generous TCR community, the event was a great success!

Left to right: Michael Gilligan, Board co-chair; Neil Fisher, Board member; Phyllis Silverman, founding Board member; Donna Smith Sharff, executive director; Mary Ellen Margosian, Board member

• Visit our runners’ fundraising pages and consider supporting their run by making a donation in memory or honor of a loved one.
• Share our runners’ stories with your friends and family to increase awareness about The Children’s Room and to support our team!
• Join our cheering section on race day!

Be a part of the TCR cheering section at Mile 18!

Join the fun on Marathon Monday! We’ll be located at Mile 18 at the intersection of Commonwealth Ave. and Chestnut St. in Newton, within walking distance from the Waban T stop on the Riverside (D) green line. Wear royal blue and help us cheer for our runners on this exciting day! If you have any questions or want to let us know that you’re coming, email sarah@childrensroom.org. We hope to see you there!

Join us for a volunteer day in The Children’s Room garden!

Monday, April 9th
2 – 6pm

A garden expert from COG Design will be here to help get our garden ready for the spring and summer seasons! Please come join us if you’d like to be involved with making “Hope Grow Here!”

For those not able to join us on this day, stay tuned for more opportunities to be involved in our ongoing garden project! If you have questions or want to let us know that you’re coming, email sarah@childrensroom.org.

Watch this incredible video of how our garden was created!

With help from our community, The Children’s Room was able to create a peaceful and welcoming garden space for the children, teens, and families that we serve. In addition to COGdesign’s gifts of talent and resources, many TCR volunteers helped make everything possible — including one of our volunteer facilitators, Kerry Lewis, who is also a professional landscape architect! We’re so grateful for everyone’s help and to Kathy Tarantola for documenting our progress and creating this amazing video for us to share with you!

To help you find a camp that’s right for your family, The Children’s Room has put together a list of 2012 summer camps for grieving children and teens. Check out camp descriptions and dates on the 2012 Summer Camps page in our Resources section.

Attend an Open House to learn more!

There will be an Open House for two of these summer camps, Manitou Experience and Circle of Tapawingo, at The Children’s Room on Sunday, April 29th at 6pm. Pizza will be served. Please RSVP to the representative of the camp in which you are interested.

Manitou Experience provides boys, entering grades 5-10, who have experienced a significant death-loss with a one-week summer camp program that helps build confidence, encourage laughter, and navigate their grief through friendship, teamwork, athletics, and the common bond of loss.

- RSVP to ryan@manitouexperience.org

Circle of Tapawingo is a week-long overnight camp program for girls between the ages of eight and sixteen who have experienced the death of a parent. Our mission is twofold: to offer our campers the adventures and fun of living and playing together at a beautiful, traditional overnight camp in Maine while offering them a supportive place in which to share their grief.

- RSVP to Cathy at cspear@circleoftapawingo.org

The Children’s Room is happy to present an educational opportunity for teachers, counselors, social workers, and other professionals who work with children and families. Deborah Rivlin, Director of Education & Training at TCR, will be leading four workshops this August on issues affecting grieving children of all ages and their communities. Continuing Education credits are available.

Topics include:

• Fostering Resiliency in Children Coping with Death, Illness, and Other Losses
• Helping Your Community Respond to Loss: Creating a Crisis Team and Plan of Action
• “If we lost Uncle David, why don’t we go find him?” Strategies for Talking with Young Children about Death, Dying, and Loss
• Understanding the Challenges of Loss in Adolescence

Learn more by visiting our Workshops page or downloading our 2012 Summer Workshop Series flyer.

Festive food and drinks added to the night's success

Richard and Lisa Greene hosted a very special cocktail reception at their home, to appreciate members of our Circle of Hope Giving Community. Many TCR supporters gathered together at this memorable event, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Centerpoint Advisors, The Betsy Hotel, and the Plutzik Goldwasser Family Foundation.

TCR and Centerpoint leaders: Richard Greene, Donna Smith Sharff, Michael Gilligan, Jennifer Wolfsberg, and John Wolfsberg

Everyone listened to a beautiful talk by Courtney Silva, whose father died when she was age six. Courtney is now 25 and she spoke of being honored and excited to work in our Sunday group at TCR, supporting six- and seven-year-old children who have experienced the death of a parent or sibling. Having once been supported by The Children’s Room, she now gives back to families at TCR as a program volunteer.

Richard & Lisa Greene announce the raffle winner

An exciting moment of the evening came when names were drawn for the raffle – two lucky guests won a gift certificate for a wonderful trip to The Betsy Hotel in Florida! Philanthropy programs at the Betsy in Southbeach make this beachfront hotel a model of community partnership.  We appreciate The Betsy’s commitment to good works and the generous trip they donated to The Children’s Room.

The event marked the gathering of our many generous Circle of Hope donors. Great food and camaraderie made it a night to remember.

ARLINGTON, February 22, 2012—The Children’s Room of Arlington announces today that Nancy Simpson-Banker has joined the nonprofit as its Director of Development. Simpson-Banker has extensive experience stewarding major gift donors, and in running capital campaigns for human service organizations. Simpson-Banker was, most recently, the Director of Recruitment and Training for University Advancement for Boston College.

Simpson-Banker is the first full-time director of development at The Children’s Room, which was founded in 1999. Previously, The Children’s Room’s current Director of Communications, Anne Favaloro, also had the title Director of Development and split her time between development and communications responsibilities. Favaloro will expand her communications role at The Children’s Room and assist as Simpson-Banker assumes full responsibility for development initiatives.

“Nancy is a talented professional with an extensive background in capital campaigns and major gifts. She is passionate about our mission, which is to help grieving children, teens, and families to go on living fully. Bereaved families come to us in emotional, spiritual, and financial crisis. They have critical needs, and Nancy knows that we can’t do our work without a strong base of financial support,” said Donna Sharff, executive director of The Children’s Room. “We are also very excited that Anne will be devoting all of her energies to marketing and communications. We’re looking forward to expanding our profile within the communities we serve.”

Simpson-Banker has participated in numerous development campaigns over the last 25 years, including an $11 million capital campaign for Mt. Auburn Hospital. She cultivated Faulkner Hospital’s first-ever $1 million gift, and doubled annual fundraising revenues during her seven-year tenure. She has presented on development, special-event fundraising, and major gifts for professional associations and conferences. She lives in Needham where she is an active member of the First Parish of Needham.

“This is an amazing opportunity to raise funds for services and programs that change people’s lives,” said Simpson-Banker. “The Children’s Room nurtures families and individuals who are in deep emotional crises as a result of premature death. This is an issue that affected me deeply when I was a teen, and I feel privileged to be in a position where I can now help others in the same position.”

Favaloro, a former producer for WGBH and book editor, will be expanding her role creating multimedia, video, and print projects for The Children’s Room. “This is a very exciting opportunity,” said Favaloro. “There are a lot of stories to tell about the life-changing work that happens at The Children’s Room, and I look forward to sharing those stories.”