Supporting Grieving Youth, Together

Learning Through Loss is on a mission to transform how an entire generation experiences grief by bringing evidence-based workshops directly into schools, free of charge, for Grade 8 and Grade 10 students across British Columbia.

When our founder Sandra Elder completed her graduate thesis on adolescent grief, she uncovered something both simple and profound: the most effective form of support for grieving youth isn't a professional, it's a peer. Young people are going to turn to their friends anyway. The question is whether those friends will know how to show up.

Our Good Grief Workshops equip Grade 8 and 10 students with the language, tools, and confidence to understand their own grief and support the people around them. We go into schools because that's where youth already are, and we meet them in hopes of preventing grief from becoming shame.

Why It Matters

Because unacknowledged grief can warp into shame, guilt, depression and more. Without language and community, young people learn to hide what they feel. They carry it silently through adolescence and into adulthood. Our workshops interrupt that pattern, giving youth permission to grieve openly and the skills to hold space for one another.

Imagine a generation of young people who don't shy away from loss. Who knows what to say. Who lean in instead of pulling away. That generation is possible, and it starts in Grade 8.

Why We Need You

Your gift brings Good Grief Workshops into schools and directly into the hands of young people who will carry this learning for the rest of their lives, and pass it on.

As a registered Canadian charity, we rely on the generosity of donors like you. Your gift directly funds life-changing grief support for youth, making it possible for us to be there, one conversation, one workshop, one healing space at a time.

Thank you for supporting grieving youth. Thank you for making healing possible.