By Gabriella Bancheri
Located in Galloway, NJ, The Alcove Center for Grieving Children and Families has, since its inception, been focused on the heart of the organization: serving and supporting local children and their families.
The Alcove offers resources, counseling services, and programs for children and families who have lost loved ones. The most notable among them include supervised and therapeutic visitation, individual and group therapy, support groups, and outreach.
Founded by two therapists and social workers who identified a need for these services in South Jersey, Pat Smith and Mindy Shemtov began the initiative by conducting support groups for children, initially held in Somers Point at a space donated by a local church.
While these groups were initially held in Somers Point, serving children across Atlantic and Cape May counties, The Alcove now operates out of their Galloway space.
As the initiative began to grow, Shemtov and Smith went beyond their own spaces and started offering outreach opportunities to schools. This was primarily to ensure that children could access their resources even if they were unable to travel to their offices.
Their Galloway location, equipped with several meeting rooms and office spaces, has decorated rooms appropriate for different age groups. The decoration and painting of the rooms were actually facilitated by local schoolchildren to give the space that extra touch. The aim was to have the space decorated by the children in the communities the organization serves, to make those children feel as comfortable and safe as possible.
Their thrift shop, located in the same shopping center as the resource center, has previously raised over 400 thousand dollars for the Center’s initiative and runs almost solely on the efforts of volunteers from the local community. The shop accepts volunteers and donations on a rolling basis.
When it comes to fundraising opportunities, The Alcove has gotten pretty creative. Some previous fundraising initiatives include opportunities to transfer Walgreens cash rewards as donations, golf classics, and ice cream festivals.
There are several other ways to give back to the organization, including through their Major Gifts and Annual Giving Programs, which allow donors to establish an “annual gift making relationship with the organization,” and the opportunity for them to support programs of their choosing, according to their site.
For more information on operating hours, staff, and volunteering and donation options, head over to their website and Facebook page, which the team updates and posts on regularly.
Gabriella is a Ventnor City resident and graduate of the University of London with an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing. Her writing is featured in a variety of digital publications ranging from food and beverage to literature to ecotourism.
