In March of 2021, Game to Grow applied for a grant from Child’s Play Charity to expand our therapeutic role-playing game services to serve foster youth. I’m thrilled to announce that we have received the grant and have begun providing much-needed services to foster youth across Washington! Read more below and learn how you can help get these services to more youth.
Game to Grow has collaborated with Child’s Play Charity for years. A foundational grant from Child’s Play helped launch Game to Grow as a nonprofit in 2017, and a tech grant from Child’s Play was instrumental in expanding youth services to include Minecraft. (Learn more about our Minecraft social groups here!)
Our most recent collaboration with Child’s Play allows us to offer no-cost services to youth in foster care. Historically, most of the youth participants who attend our group services are referred to us by a therapist or teacher, or they are brought to us by a parent seeking some social support for their child. What about the youth who don’t have these types of support structures? Too often we were unfortunately unable to connect with and provide them much-needed play-based group services.
Until now!
Thanks to a grant from Child’s Play Charity, we’ve established a relationship with Youthnet Northwest and have been able to work with their dedicated staff to expand our TA-RPG services for youth in their care. We’ve run workshops for Youthnet staff so they understand the life-enriching potential of role-playing games and are better able to identify which youth in their care may be ideal for joining our program. We have also had Game to Grow staff receive supplemental training from Youthnet affiliates to ensure our staff running these programs are equipped to meet the needs of the new youth in our care.
As one of the Game to Grow team members running a Critical Core RPG group for youth in foster care, I can already speak to the power of this model. Youth who have struggled to share their voices now take on the mantle of fantastic heroes, building a sense of agency and supportive collaboration with a group of peers. It really does feel like magic.
Thanks to the support from Child’s Play, we have more open scholarship spots still available for youth in foster care! If you or someone you know works with or in the foster care system, please send us a message because we’d love to make sure we help all of the youth we can.
I’d you’d like to make sure the scholarships for this program never run out, click here to make a donation to Game to Grow. Your support will ensure that we reach even more youth in need.