HISTORY & MISSION
Established in 2008 by Dr. Rosa Gil, the Life is Precious™ (LIP) Latina Girls Club & Suicide Prevention program is a project of Comunilife, the leading nonprofit health and human services agency serving NYC's Hispanic community since 1989.
Young Latinas have become the teen population with the highest rate of suicide attempt in the country. At Life is Precious™, we combine individual and group counseling, arts therapy, academic support, and nutritional and fitness activities. Psychiatric services are provided by partnering clinics.
Comunilife Life is Precious Video 2016
OUR RESULTS
To date, more than 750 Latina teens have enrolled in LIP. With the services they received at LIP, their academic performance has improved– where once 50% of these young women were held back or dropped out of school, now 100% advanced to the next grade in June 2023. They have improved family relationships – finding the language, the support and the approach with which to work out deep personal conflicts with parents and grandparents who struggle to understand what they are going through or what they need. They are making friends – finding solace in the company and support of girls who are going through the same battles that they are. They are feeling new pride in their bilingual, bicultural backgrounds.
Most importantly – not one of our at-risk Latina teens has completed suicide after joining
Life is Precious™
Soleda
The program taught me that I’m not alone. Other girls get mad, just like me – and sometimes for the same reasons as me. When I see other girls opening up, I feel braver.
Destiny
If anything, God forbid, happened to any of us, it would hurt all of us. So we all take better care of ourselves.
Rosa
They know when you need help here – you don’t even have to tell them. They give you their hand. And then they give it again. They give it till you know they really mean it.