We founded Game to Grow after seeing the amazing power of tabletop role-playing games to help teens, adolescents, and emerging adults become more confident, creative, and socially capable. We began using role-playing games to help kids in 2011, and founded Wheelhouse Workshop in 2013.  We have had amazing success with Wheelhouse Workshop, helping our participants build important social skills and achieve therapeutic benefits, all while playing games in a safe, supportive environment. Journalists around the world have written about our work, and we have spoken around the country about the impact of our groups.

Now we want to expand on that work.  Wheelhouse Workshop has been an amazing labor of love, but was limited in our reach because of its status as a for-profit partnership.  We founded Game to Grow in order to expand the successes we've had as Wheelhouse Workshop into more diverse communities with broader challenges, using a larger range of games.

We just open our very own office space on September 1st that can hold more kids than ever, and we will use it to host trainings to spread the power of therapeutic gaming to other areas.

While Wheelhouse Workshop was limited to working primarily with families who could come to us, and focused on using tabletop games in sessions, Game to Grow will expand to offer services using other types of games, including video games, to communities with higher economic need.  We also plan to offer services in hospitals, treatment centers, and youth correctional facilities, using the power of games to help young people overcome challenges.

Your help is essential. Your donations will allow us to purchase the necessary equipment to run our groups: the game materials, the tables and chairs for the youth to use in sessions at our office, and the furniture so that families will feel comfortable in the lobby while their children are in a session.

We have big plans. We'll not only use your donations to extend the success of our tabletop games groups. We will share our experience and knowledge through trainings hosted in our new office, and your donations will allow us to be much more effective with a whiteboard, projector, and screen in our conference room. As we expand our services we'll offer video gaming groups, and we'll use the donations from this campaign to purchase the essential equipment for those services as well.

Once we meet our goals for equipment and materials, every additional donation from this campaign will be put into a scholarship fund so that we can serve even more families in need.

Thanks for your support!

-Testimonials-

“Over a year later, and both kids are just as engaged as they were the first day! An added bonus is that they work together collaboratively. [The groups] have helped tremendously with our sibling struggles as well as how to work with people outside of our house.”

“My normally quiet and introverted son leaves this workshop smiling and excited to share out the adventures he just embarked upon. He sees how to better listen, interact, and help others. Thank you for this experience for him and our family.”

“Before these groups she was very introverted, afterwards, she has come out of her shell, she shines.”

“These groups have helped my family because my daughter has been able to express her feelings better, because she understands them.”

-Funding Levels-

$2000 Tabletop Games Unlocked!

We can run groups in our new space starting in October!

$4000 Training Unlocked!

We'll have the equipment necessary to run groups and to host trainings at our new space!

$10000 Video Games Unlocked

We'll have the ability to offer groups using video games, and hire the additional staff to run those groups!