Studo10’s Mario Hilario sat down with Ryan Loiselle, the Program Director of Friend's Way to discuss the upcoming Funny4Funds Fundraiser, happening Thursday, March 21, 2024 at the Portuguese Comedy Club in Cranston.
Children’s Grief Awareness Day is recognized each year on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. FRIENDS WAY and the Rocha family were recently featured on WJAR TV 10 to raise awareness of the grief that many families are experiencing this holiday season. The Rocha family is grieving the loss of 43-year-old father and Warwick firefighter Justin Rocha.
For the fifth year, FRIENDS WAY has partnered with Christmas Décor by Seascape to brighten the holidays for a grieving family. The Donnelly family of Coventry lost father and fiancé Bradley Cooke in 2015 to a heart attack eight years ago. SeaScape generously donated the decorations, and put them up for the family to help ease their grief this holiday season.
FRIENDS WAY is a finalist for the Red Sox Foundation’s 9th Annual "IMPACT" Awards (Inspiring More Philanthropy Across Charities Together) presented by the Ruderman Family Foundation.
If we secure first place, FRIENDS WAY will receive a $10,000 grant! We received second place in 2022, and would love to take home the big prize of $10,000 this year.
Go to www.redsox.com/IMPACT every day, from Tuesday, May 2 to Wednesday, May 31 and vote for FRIENDS WAY, in Rhode Island. You can vote daily, from each email address that you have.
Follow FRIENDS WAY on social media and share your updates!
We are on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FRIENDSWAYRI
Instagram: www.instagram.com/friendswayri/
Twitter: @friendsway
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/friendsway
FRIENDS WAY was featured on WPRI’s Community Focus on December 23. Program director Ryan Loiselle, LICSW, discussed grief during the holidays and the many services that FRIENDS WAY offers. Watch the video below, courtesy of WPRI.com.
For the fourth year, FRIENDS WAY has partnered with Christmas Décor by Seascape to brighten the holidays for a grieving family. The Hawkes family of Chepachet lost five-year-old Sammy to leukemia last March. SeaScape generously donated lights and decorations, and put them up for the family to help ease their grief this holiday season.
We’ve excited to announce that FRIENDS WAY has received a grant from the CVS Health Foundation Hometown Fund! The CVS Health Foundation established the Hometown Fund as a way to give back to the communities it calls home. It is an annual commitment to invest in nonprofits that are advancing health equity, addressing social determinants of health and increasing access to workforce training and education in their home states of Rhode Island, Connecticut and neighboring Massachusetts.
The grant directly supports FRIENDS WAY’s programs, which provide approximately 300 children a year with free grief counseling through age-appropriate, peer-led group sessions. Sessions are held throughout the school year, three days a week, every other week, and specialized groups for children affected by suicide or addiction are held every other Wednesday. Of the total participants, 28% have lost a significant loved one to drug overdose, 16% to cancer, 16% to heart attack, 15% to illness, and 9% to suicide. Overall, 77% of children served have lost a parent.
The trauma associated with the death of a loved one can significantly impact a child’s life and their social/emotional health, and if gone unattended, can often result in declining academic performance in school, problems concentrating, and feelings of isolation, which can result in difficulty with social relationships. Bereaved children are also at greater risk of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions, as well as substance abuse. Through a seven year study completed at the University of Pittsburgh, it was found that “Early identification and intervention are the keys to protecting children against the effects of parental loss.”
FRIENDS WAY serves children living in RI, CT, and MA, ages 3-18 from all races and socioeconomic backgrounds (55% of total participants served are children). Over the past two years, FRIENDS WAY has been working to serve more BIPOC children and families (28% of total served), specifically those living in Central Falls, Providence, and Pawtucket. FRIENDS WAY serves the parents/caregivers of each child as well, and often parents who have lost children (45% of total served).
This Just In: We are proud to announce that we received 2nd place in the Red Sox Foundation IMPACT award. It was a very close race for all nominees in Rhode Island.
We appreciate all of the support that FRIENDS WAY received. Our partners in the RI community, ensuring that mental health is a priority, also were awarded grants: St. Mary's Home for Children, Family Service of RI, SafeBAE, and Newport Mental Health.
$3,000 will come in handy!
Please share with your community about the impact that you had to help us at FRIENDS WAY.
We appreciate you!
Follow FRIENDS WAY on social media and share your updates!
We are on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FRIENDSWAYRI
Instagram: www.instagram.com/friendswayri/
Twitter: @friendsway
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/friendsway
FRIENDS WAY is a finalist for the Red Sox Foundation’s 8th Annual "IMPACT" Awards (Inspiring More Philanthropy Across Charities Together) presented by the Ruderman Family Foundation.
If we secure first place, FRIENDS WAY will receive a $10,000 grant! We have received first and second place in the past, and we would love to take home the big prize of $10,000!
Go to www.redsox.com/IMPACT every day, from Thursday, May 5/5 to Monday, May 30 and vote for FRIENDS WAY, in Rhode Island. You can vote daily, from each email address that you have.
Follow FRIENDS WAY on social media and share your updates!
We are on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/FRIENDSWAYRI
Instagram: www.instagram.com/friendswayri/
Twitter: @friendsway
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/friendsway
FRIENDS WAY has been selected by Judi’s House/JAG Institute as a Childhood Bereavement Changemaker. After a thorough vetting process that involved more than 59 diverse organizations across the U.S., FRIENDS WAY emerged as a passionate leader interested in strengthening outcomes for grieving youth in our community.
Developed by Denver-based grief care organization, Judi’s House/JAG Institute, in partnership with the New York Life Foundation and the National Alliance for Children’s Grief, three unique cohorts of Changemakers will grow their capacity for data collection and program evaluation through a series of trainings, workshops, and collaborative learning sessions.
“By establishing a culture that values and supports data for successful design and implementation of evaluation strategies, the Changemaker initiative will move the childhood bereavement field closer to a vision of no child alone in grief.” – Dr. Laura Landry, Director of Evaluation and Research, Judi’s House/JAG Institute
Over the course of a year, agencies will receive practical recommendations to address data and evaluation needs big and small that can inform planning, influence change, and enhance the overall impact FRIENDS WAY has on the nearly 200 children each year in Rhode Island who have experienced the death of someone significant in their lives.
Through a partnership between Segue Learning Institute and FRIENDS WAY, United Way is now funding new services for grieving children in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
The new program meets once a week to help address loss in young people’s lives.
For the third year, FRIENDS WAY has partnered with Christmas Décor by Seascape to brighten the holidays for a grieving family. The Cunniff family of Foster has experienced two major losses in the past two years: their grandmother, and Alex, their young brother and son.
NBC10 profiled a local family, the Westcotts, who experienced a devastating loss during the holidays and are working with FRIENDS WAY to cope with their grief.
NBC10 tells the story of a local child who was helped at FRIENDS WAY and highlights the work FRIENDS WAY has done for hundreds of families.
Dear Friends and Supporters,
It is with great disappointment that we must tell you that FRIENDS WAY has made the difficult decision to cancel our September 17, 2021 Diamonds in the Sky gala. The rise in transmission rates of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 presents a significant health and safety risk to individuals in large gatherings given its expected peak around the time of our Gala. Infection control experts in our parent company, Lifespan, and FRIENDS WAY’s Board of Directors have agreed that it would be most prudent to not host such an event at this time.
We have been very excited about our plans for this year’s event and were looking forward to joining together to celebrate FRIENDS WAY. As many of you know, the Gala is our biggest fundraiser of the year, bringing in almost half of our operating revenue. We have many generous sponsors supporting the Gala and want to recognize their contributions to making the event successful. A full list of our supporters to date can be found below, and we hope you will join us in thanking these important contributors to the health of our community. In the meantime your support is more valuable than ever, as children and families experience unprecedented loss.
Unfortunately, this is the second Gala that we have had to cancel, and the second time we have tried to honor Dan Wall, former President and CEO of Bradley Hospital with the Michael E. Wiggins Leadership Award. Dan has been a tireless advocate for FRIENDS WAY when Gateway Healthcare and its affiliates joined Lifespan. His generosity in sharing Bradley’s resources and promoting the important work that FRIENDS WAY does has helped us sustain and grow the organization. Thank you, Dan.
Through the hard work of our Gala Committee and Board of Directors, we have been gathering many great items for our auction to help bring in important revenue. Our plans were to start the auction online, with the final bids culminating at the Gala. We will move forward with the online auction, with items posting through the Greater Giving platform. Final bids will be due Friday night, September 17 at 8:00 pm.
We hope that you will enjoy our auction items and find something to pique your interest (and competitive spirit)! You’ll be able to bid as frequently as you like and see who you are bidding against. Of course, direct donations will also be accepted online through the auction platform. You’ll be hearing from us again soon with auction details, and the link will be posted here as soon as it is available.
Hopefully, we will be able to come together soon to share FRIENDS WAY’s newest endeavors and hear from our families about what the organization has meant to them to promote their healing. Thank you for your ongoing support.
Sincerely,
Susan Stevenson, Executive Director, FRIENDS WAY
Melinda Gaudreau, Chair, Board of Directors
Carolyn Kyle, Chair, Gala Committee
WPRI 12 highlights the services FRIENDS WAY provides and how it has adapted to continue to support children during COVID-19.
“With FRIENDS WAY, I found a lot of people who went through the same thing as me,” says Abigail Beatrice, who remembers her dad, Chris, and talks about how FRIENDS WAY has helped her cope with his loss.
NBC 10’s Barbara Morse highlighted the virtual support groups FRIENDS WAY is offering to help kids cope with grief while at the same time practicing social distancing to prevent COVID-19. Ryan Loiselle, program director at FRIENDS WAY, discussed how FRIENDS WAY has transformed its programs into virtual sessions that are helping children and teens deal with grief. Loiselle also discussed how FRIENDS WAY has “reimagined” its summer camp, Camp Starfish, and its summer programs.
On May 14, 2020 Ryan Loiselle, LICSW, program director at FRIENDS WAY, and Kristin Read, director of education at the Providence Children’s Museum, co-hosted a webinar on grief, play, and young children. (YouTube video)
On April 29, 2020 FRIENDS WAY’s Ryan Loiselle, LICSW joined Family Service of RI’s Sarah Kelly-Palmer, LICSW and Kayla David, LMFT to discuss how to talk about grief and loss with children during COVID-19. (Facebook video)
Our donors allow us to provide life-changing bereavement services at no-cost to participants. Any donation, big or small, can make a huge difference.
FRIENDS WAY is a division of Gateway Healthcare, a Lifespan partner. With multiple locations throughout Rhode Island, Gateway is the largest provider of behavioral health care services in the state and serves more than 15,000 clients annually.
Learn more about our partnership »© FRIENDS WAY
