Page 14 - Chester County Chamber - 2023 Guide & Membership Directory

NONPROFITS
DOING GOOD WORK
for the Community
Any community needs nonprofits to fill gaps in services and care for the well-being of local residents. Chester County has some highly dedicated, well-established charitable organizations doing just that. Below, we take a closer look at two of them.
A HAVEN
Grief is a normal, even universal, human experience, but that doesn’t make it any easier to go through. It’s an especially difficult emotion for children to process. Helping them do just that is the mission of Exton-based A Haven.
Executive Director and Co-founder Michelle Noble spent three years working at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she often interacted with families who were grieving a child lost to cancer. “That was a really formative experience because it made me consider, ‘These families have lost a child — now what?’” Noble said.
A subsequent mission trip made Noble feel that she was called to doing grief work. Through conversations in the community, she
met Liz Dreibelbis, who had worked as a children’s bereavement coordinator at Main Line Hospice and also felt called to help children through the process. The two of them co-founded A Haven, with significant support from the organization’s current Board President, Mary Ann Hughes.
By now, A Haven is well established locally. The nonprofit celebrated its five-year anniversary in February 2023.
12 Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry