Grief Groups (2025-2026, 2023-2024)
Ronnie’s House for Hope works within Desert Sands Unified School District to provide peer support grief groups for children ages 7-18 that are coping with a death. We do this through sharing experiences and many different grief activities. We give them many options as far as crafts, games, and music to express emotions. The goal is to have them identify what they feel and be able to build coping skills and resiliency to cope with them. All our elementary aged kiddos receive a stuffed sloth to remind them to take their time with their grief. Stuffed animals are great listeners. Our older kiddos receive journals to give them a place to express themselves. We serve anywhere from 9-11 schools each school year and hope to expand that this year with additional volunteers.
Contact: Jennifer Loza Founder/President
Email: jenniferLLoza@gmail.com
Phone: (760) 485-9019
Website: www.ronnieshouseforhope.org
Onsite Peer Support Grief Groups (2020-2021)
Ronnie's House For Hope is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides peer support bereavement services to children/teens and their families. Providing safe place for them to share their experiences and feelings with peers who have similar experiences. They learn to understand that there is a name for what they are feeling... grief and coping skills to help manage it. We believe that unresolved grief can lead to depression, anxiety, slipping of grades, isolation, self medicating and other negative effects. We are currently holding grief groups in 8 schools within Desert Sands Unified School District. We provide 3 sessions of 8 week groups onsite with children recommended by the school counselors. Doing an array of activities about grief helps to open conversations between the children to see how similar some are and discover they are not the only one coping with different emotions. We are hopeful to begin our evening groups soon so we can begin to incorporate the guardians as well and offer them the support they need, with the hope of offering healing to the entire family. This amazing opportunity will allow us to afford the supplies, time, driving and cost into traveling to all the schools. We are very grateful for the support of Anderson's Children's Foundation.
