About

PURPOSE DartHeart Inc. serves as a peer support network for students with post traumatic stress, offering resources and opportunities for individual survivor mentorship, ongoing campus group activities, and community mentorship for social change. Our organization is run by student and alumni survivors of trauma with guidance from health care professionals and supportive members of the community.

PHILOSOPHY Students with post traumatic stress need the opportunity to meet with each other for mutual support and to work together to actively improve the resources available to themselves and other survivors of trauma. But survivors likewise need community support in recognizing and understanding the experience they have been through with demonstrated tolerance towards the survivors to assist them as they recover. Both mutual support and community support are critical to successful recovery from post traumatic stress.

PEER SUPPORT NETWORK A key component to recovery from post traumatic stress is peer affirmation. Although the traumatic event causing post traumatic stress may be distinct among survivors, the similarities we share in our recovery process and response to every day situations because of the impact of this stress allow us to understand one another and offer support. Through unity and community mentorship, we have an overarching goal of changing the general perception of survivors as we raise awareness about the recovery process from post traumatic stress.

RESOURCES To unify our local resources for students with post traumatic stress, we bring together a network of survivors, friends of survivors, college offices and community organizations . Through this supportive network of campus contacts, student survivors are able to relay their experiences and work together with their campuses and communities to improve resources for trauma survivors.

HISTORY DartHeart was founded in March 2008 by a group of Dartmouth College student survivors. Our nonprofit organization formed out of a desire to be the missing link in the chain of support currently given to survivors of trauma. We continue to be run by student and alumni survivors of trauma as they join and develop our peer support network. In April 2009, the IRS approved DartHeart as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.