Nonprofit Created to Help Children Who Lost Parents on 9/11 Has Expanded Its Mission — and Shares What It Has Learned

Born out of the heartbreak of 9/11, Tuesday’s Children was formed to provide help and healing to young people who lost a parent in the attack. There weren’t a lot of guideposts for the nonprofit to follow.

“The mental-health professionals at the time, even the best and the brightest, really had no template for such a public tragedy,” says Terry Grace Sears, who has been the organization’s executive director since 2004.

Tuesday’s Children started by inviting kids to special events, like picnics, baseball games, or Broadway shows. Then, the group matched children with screened mentors. The volunteer commitment was at least 12 months, but some of the pairings have lasted for many years. Later, the organization offered career-readiness services, helping young people apply to college, write résumés, and find internships, and it started a summer program that brings together young people from around the world whose lives have been changed by terrorism and war.

Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the youngest children who lost a parent are now college age. Tuesday’s Children remains committed to helping them — and still stays in touch with many older participants — but over time, the organization’s work has evolved. For the last five years, it has also served children who have lost a parent in military service.

“Our mission has expanded to include what I would call the ripple effect of 9/11, which is not only the 9/11 responders, but the Gold Star families,” Sears says.

Hard-Won Lessons

Tuesday’s Children is also sharing what it’s learned with other communities in pain.

Because the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 were concentrated geographically in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, and Boston, the organization developed a community-based model of responding to mass violence.

“When there is such a loss and trauma inflicted on a community, there’s a tendency to isolate, and just doing simple things like bringing families out to picnics and fun events really kind of breaks down that trauma shell,” Sears says.

She says that in time, mental-health professionals who had struggled to reach 9/11 families were able to connect with them in the low-key environment of the group’s events. “So if there was any resistance to a clinical approach, those barriers were broken down.”

In 2012, community leaders from Newtown, Conn., contacted Tuesday’s Children after a 20-year-old gunman killed 26 people, including 20 young children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That was the start of the organization’s work helping communities that experience sudden violent trauma. In addition to program assistance, the group helps communities plan for the nitty-gritty details of fundraising, organizational development, and fiscal sponsorship.

“When a community is impacted,” Sears says, “they are heartened by the fact that here is another community that has been through this and that can really say, ‘Here’s what worked, and here’s what didn’t work.’”