Project Anchor- adolescent victims of sexual abuse

We have just begun our new Fall Cohort this September! Our group has welcomed in some new members as well as greeting familiar faces with open arms. Our goal for this cohort was to focus on fresh ideas for our teens who have been coming for a long time. We have been receiving suggestions from our teens on how to make our teen group as fun and enriching as possible. Of course, school has just started for our teens, and they deserve to have a safe place to retreat every week. We are continuing to do art-based activities as well as finding new ways to have members express themselves.

Over the last few weeks, a lot of our members have gone through life-changing events. Our teens depend on us for support, to provide a place to vent and to overall be a safe place. We have had a lot of hard conversations so far, but our teens are staying positive throughout the hard times in their lives. Fair Haven has been coming out of difficult times as well but we have found the light though the darkness and are coming up with many new ideas for our agency including continued maintenance of our support groups.

In the beginning of our new cohort, we wanted to sit down with our group members to see how they really felt about being in a group. Many wrote sayings such as “I`m happy to be here” or “I’m grateful”. There were some members who wrote “I’m nervous to be here”. This exercise helped us work through the hard emotions of being the new person in a group. This exercise helped new members meet our teens who have been coming for a long time. This helped these members to feel more comfortable about being in a new environment.

With the Fall Cohort just getting started, we are hopeful to continue our journey with these group members through art expression. We are always grateful to receive canvas, paints, paint brushes, and craft materials. We also want to reward our teens for showing up each week, therefore, we would like to continue to provide snacks and incentives because they deserve it! Every donation is greatly appreciated by Fair Haven always!