The mission of the Grand  Bahama Resilience Center is to promote healthy adaptation and growth in the face of change, challenge and stress, through the provision of education, wellness, therapeutic services and opportunities for connection to individuals, families, and the community as a whole.

 

What the Grand Bahama Resilience Center aspires to do is reconnect a fragmented community, restore a sense of social cohesion, and create a welcoming space to gather and collectively heal. The center is focused on helping people adapt to change and stressful events in healthy ways and offer services, if needed, promote normalization of trauma reactions, offer a holistic approach to recovery and resilience, and empower community members in identifying what types of activities could best meet their needs.

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Most people have someone to reach out to when they have been through a difficult experience. Yet, when individuals and families are deeply impacted by trauma or distress, they may not access these resources, seek help, or function well enough to engage in their normal strategies. When an entire community is affected, as by a disaster, it can be more difficult. Though communities come together, each person is affected, and this can strain even the strongest connections over time. As people begin to recover and rebuild their physical world, the challenges can pile up bringing up difficult emotions and behaviors, and overwhelming memories. Recovery from such an event takes a long time, and new skills and supports are needed. Grand Bahama's recovery has been further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the center offers a number of programs, services and activities to support coping. 

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The center's activities are supported by local volunteers, partners, and other organizations. The center is community-driven and community-led, meaning that staff receives feedback from the community through surveys and focus groups on what is needed to regain some routine and promotion of healthy activity and wellness in their day to day lives. We provide recreational activities such as movie night, family game night, arts and crafts, bingo, trivia, as well as other services such as life coaching, mentoring, peer support or groups, and individual counseling sessions. 

 

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