Right now we are working to move to the next level of service. To do this we need your support. Below are the various programs and initiatives that Band of the Strong is currently doing as a way to serve the our community here in Nebraska.
OUR ASK: See what we do and if it resonates with your story, consider donating to ensure we can continue to grow and sustain into the future!
BOTS x The Collective for Hope
Quarterly Events and Camps
We have worked with The Collective for Hope for over the past 8 years. In that time we have created a variety of programs that have spanned from day-events at their annual grief camp to our most current work with the quarterly events we hold. These quarterly events are meant to provide young people who are grieving new experiences, in new and novel places, to re-tell their grief stories into stories of strength. Below are videos of the experience and impact of these events.
Our current focus is on grieving children and families. For the coming year we have events planned for grieving children in the form of multi-week programming that works to unveil the stories of grievers and empower them to transform those stories. These multi-week programming sessions also are designed to provide new experiences and new perspectives on their individual truths. These programs run weekly throughout each month for the grieving children and families and culminate in the form of large quarterly events that are meant to help young people find “ah ha” moments in their grief journeys.
This general programming, noted above in the section about “What We Do,” requires a variety of art supplies, craft supplies, writing supplies, audio equipment, and the cost to pay employees to execute programming and analyze programming results. In the past years, we have been able to get by volunteering our time and efforts in the context of program execution, research, and development. As we look to move towards helping the community full time, it is the hope that we can secure funding that will allow us to sustain as we grow.
Creative Nights for Grieving Children
Creative Nights are Band of the Strong’s community-based grief programs for young people. They are built on a simple but important belief: grieving young people need space to remember, create, belong, and breathe.
Many grief programs ask participants to talk directly about their loss, which is important, powerful, and necessary. At the same time, young people do not always enter grief through words. Sometimes they enter through a song, a painting, a shared laugh, a story, a game, or a quiet moment beside someone they trust.
Creative Nights are designed to begin indirectly. Youth are invited into creative activities such as art, music, writing, storytelling, and play. These activities give young people a chance to step outside the heaviness of grief while still being held in a space where grief is understood. They are not pressured to talk before they are ready. Instead, they are given agency to decide when, how, and with whom they want to engage their grief more directly.
This matters because healthy grieving often involves movement. Young people need opportunities to remember and express what hurts, but they also need opportunities to laugh, create, rest, build friendships, and experience themselves as more than their loss. Creative Nights are built around that movement.
Our volunteers and adult facilitators are trained to recognize common grief responses, build safe relationships, listen without forcing disclosure, and support young people as they make sense of their experiences. The creative activity is not a distraction from grief. It is often the bridge that allows grief to be expressed.
A young person might begin the night painting quietly. Later, they may tell a story about the person who died. Another young person might spend most of the evening playing a game, then suddenly ask a peer, “Did that happen to you too?” These moments cannot always be scheduled, but they can be supported. Creative Nights create the kind of environment where those moments are more likely to emerge.
At their best, Creative Nights become a self-organizing community of care. Youth know why they are there, but they are not reduced to their grief. They are surrounded by peers who understand, adults who can gently guide, and creative tools that help them tell their stories in more than one way.
The goal is not to make grief disappear. The goal is to help young people carry grief with more connection, agency, meaning, and support.
