News Archives
Check out the Project Joy News Archive:
Project Joy Documentary Premiers
Life is Good to help take Project Joy National
Project Joy helps beat the Biloxi Blues
Project Joy highlighted on American Idol
PJ’s Steve Gross interviewed on WBOS - MP3
PJ on WBZ Hero Compilation -MOV
PJ highlighted in the Boston Globe - PDF
Previous Newsletters
Spreading Joy — Spring 2008 (HTML)
Spreading Joy — Summer 2007 (HTML)
Spreading Joy — Winter 2005 (PDF)
Spreading Joy — Spring 2004 (PDF)
The Importance of Being Playful
If you were to list the most important things in your child’s life, how close to the top would you put his ability to play?”Playfulness - the motivation to freely and pleasingly engage with and connect to the world around them - is the single most important trait children can have,” says Steve Gross, the founder and executive director of Project Joy. This nonprofit organization was established in Boston in 1989 to use the healing power of play to transform children sidelined by chronic trauma.
Protectors of play offer fun and games - and therapy
Steven Gross has always loved to play. A Needham native, when he was a student at Needham High, he played football, basketball, baseball and ran track. In his senior year he won the role of Conrad Birdie in “Bye Bye Birdie.” Even today, when he sits down to talk, he’s bursting with exuberance, unable to stay still. He comes across as a big happy kid.
This is a major asset in his very serious line of work. He lives in West Roxbury with his wife Kerrie, their 15-year-old son, Mookie (which he promises is a nickname), and their Chihuahua, Jimmy. He is the director for the Children’s Trauma Recovery Foundation and the founder and executive director of Project Joy, a private, non-profit organization that earmarks play as, in Gross’ words, “the single most important activity in the life of a child.”
All the Boys and Girls Now
Though nearly two years have passed since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, young children - those who watched as their homes and communities were destroyed - still suffer from the effects of that trauma.
“Whenever a rain cloud passes overhead, young children here become incredibly frightened,” says Pamela Mottley, an early childhood specialist at Mississippi State University (MSU). “Some kids can act out with aggression; others can’t sleep at night because they are so afraid.”
To help Katrina’s youngest victims, Mottley and her team of researchers and educators at MSU turned to Project Joy. The Boston based nonprofit has trained hudreds of preschool teachers and daycare providers throughout the Northeast to help young children recover from trauma through play.
