My Nonprofit Reviews
concernedforchildren
Review for Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors, Evanston, IL, USA
Moderators are poorly trained and unqualified to interfere in people's grief. They repeatedly invalidated my feelings, are inappropriately critical of emotions, and insensitive. They break all the basic rules of what one should not say to someone grieving and are too self-congratulatory to examine their own shortcomings. This forum is not queer friendly and I felt traumatized by the treatment I received from culturally insensitive staff. I went there seeking healing and intended to pay for their counseling and donate, but within a week, I became alarmed by their incompetence and found myself awake for hours, upset over their gross insensitivity, both to my grief and to my need to identify as queer and seek queer companionship. I deeply regret stumbling on this organization as they are utterly clueless about gay issues.
More Feedback
If I had to make changes to this organization, I would...
Assign new professionally trained staff and make them take sensitivity training--including the director.
Alliance of Hope welcomes and includes members of every community including the LGBTQ community. We are sorry this person did not find the help she was seeking on our forum. Our forum moderators receive extensive training and are hand-picked for their demonstrated empathy, compassion and ability to provide hope after suicide to a diverse community. We are saddened that our best efforts to welcome and support this individual were met with anger, cynicism and accusations that we were insensitive to her needs. We wish her well and hope she finds the support and understanding she is seeking.
