Save The Date!
Plan to join us for the 11th anniversary of the Helping the Helpers Awareness and Education Day.
We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, October 25th, 2025 in Antigonish!
Once the registrations are complete, you may make a single payment for by cheque or credit card for the people participating from your organization. Details for payment will appear on the invoice you will receive when you complete your registration.
If you have questions or require assistance, you may email us at helpingthehelpers@agendamanagers.com
Scholarship Update
Awareness and Education for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Frontline Professionals Scholarship
Applications for the Helping The Helpers’ Awareness and Education for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for Frontline Professionals Scholarship are now acccpeted until September 30, 2025.
For more information, please visit here.
Our Mission
‘Coping and Dealing with PTSD for Frontline Professionals and Families’
Every day, there are people who dedicate their lives to helping others—first responders, frontline workers, caregivers, educators, and community leaders.
At Helping the Helpers, we strive to dispel the stigma and myths regarding PTSD while providing coping strategies and support for first responders, allied front-line professionals and their families who are impacted by or at risk for psychological workplace injuries such as PTSD / OSI.
This is our story.
Helping The Helpers mission is to dispel the stigma and myths regarding PTSD. Helping the Helpers provides awareness and education programs that not only include coping strategies and support for first responders, allied front-line professionals and their families who are impacted by or at risk for psychological workplace injuries such as PTSD / OSI but also offer a safe place for them to share lived experiences and realize peer support.
The Helping the Helpers Organization was formed in 2014 in response to John Garth MacDonald’s diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) From the outset, the organization had one simple goal – to dispel the stigma of PTSD and other psychological workplace injuries through education and awareness. Helping the Helpers has continued to demonstrate this commitment guided by these pillars:
- Public Awareness
Increase awareness of the impact and consequences that PTSD has on frontline professionals, their families and colleagues, through open discourse of individual lived experiences of PTSD
- Clinical Education
Provide clinical education by way of community resources on the effects of PTSD for frontline professionals, their families and colleagues.
- Reduce Stigma
Reduce the stigma of PTSD with inter-professional relationships and society.
- Community Networking Supports
Initiate dialogue and networking among professionals and society with the ultimate goal to share and identify appropriate community supports for families and those frontline professionals suffering with PTSD.
Helping the Helpers is a 100% volunteer driven organization and realizes these goals through a variety of programs and activities. The organization has developed compressive first responder and family / peer support groups. A scholarship program supports students entering relevant professions. A community funding program is available for first responders and frontline workers who meet stated criteria and are in early stages of a PTSD recovery. And of course, the Helping the Helpers Education and Awareness Day, started in 2014, in the flagship event of the organization, bringing lived experiences, resources and training to our audience.
Story of the Challenge Coin
In 2018, the Helping the Helpers committee designed and created a “Challenge Coin.” This Coin features the symbol of the organization and is given to first responders, frontline workers and their families as a gesture of thanks and a reflection of the respect and honour for the commitment and sacrifice made in daily service. Since the Coin was introduced in 2018, more than 2500 coins have been distributed. The Coins have become not only a symbol of pride and membership in this very exclusive club of first responders and families from all disciplines but also a source of HOPE, comfort and memory for those who cherish them.
