Over two decades ago, Rainbows, the world’s largest grief support charity, began its mission to heal the hearts of children. Today our not-for-profit organization is still helping kids cope with the heart-searing pain that descends when they hear the ominous words: Your mother and I are getting a divorce. Grandma was killed in a car crash. Dad’s left us – for good. Nearly two million kids. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they’d ring Manhattan 71 times. Hands linked, they’d form a line of heartache around the U.S. that would stretch from New York City west to Seattle, south to San Francisco, southeast to Orlando and then back north again to New York City.

“Two million youth are an awful lot of children and teens. But the sad truth is, they represent only a tiny fraction of the kids who are grieving today,” says Suzy Yehl Marta, President and Founder of the award-winning organization and author of Healing the Hurt, Restoring the Hope (SawRobin Press, 2003).

According to recent census data, 7 out of 10 youth live in nontraditional families marked by death, divorce, separation and abandonment. Terrorist attacks, the threat of war and manmade and natural disasters add more fear and uncertainty to the lives of youngsters everywhere.

“Adults rely on life experience to cope with loss and crises. Youth don’t have that kind of resource to call upon. They need help resolving these issues,” says Marta, who learned the lesson the hard way following her own divorce when her sons were only 7, 8, and 9. “Everyone assured me the boys were fine; that kids were resilient and they’d bounce back.” But they weren’t and they didn’t. One got into trouble at school. Another started shoplifting candy from a local store. The eldest bossed around his brothers and picked fights when they wouldn’t listen. Previously good students, all three saw their grades plummet.

Marta was working several part-time jobs and struggling to keep the family together financially when she had her epiphany: Her boys were hurting, badly, and the divorce was to blame. She tried counseling but quit when the therapist told her they were all doing just fine. She searched for a program for the boys but found none. So, with other parent volunteers, she ran weekend retreats for grieving youth through her local church. In three years, 800 kids came – each one broken-hearted, angry, confused, isolated in pain.

Rainbows began with three small pilot programs in Chicago-area schools. Today, with more than 9000 program sites worldwide and a network of 32,000 trained volunteer facilitators, Rainbows oversees effective, peer-support programs throughout the USA and 16 other countries.

Rainbows four age-appropriate programs serve children from pre-school through young adulthood. A fifth program works with single parents. Still operating on a shoestring budget and miniscule staff, Rainbows also offers Silver Linings, a Crisis Response Program designed for use by teachers and youth group leaders following community or large-scale disasters. More than 600 editions of the program were distributed nationwide following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Through its Corporate Service Program, Rainbows also educates corporate managers and works with Employee Assistance Programs to educate people about grief issues that affect employees and provides a smorgasbord of services for workers and their families.

Despite its growth and expansion, Rainbows focus remains clearly entered on grieving youth. For Suzy Yehl Marta, now remarried and the mother to six adult children, the challenge today is the same as it was over two decades ago: To provide grief support to every child or teen who needs help coping with the pain of loss. “To settle for anything less,” she says, “would be unthinkable.

For more information, contact Rainbows at 800-266-3206 or 847-952-1770 or visit our website at www.rainbows.org