NCAR, the National Collaborative on Adversity and Resilience, is a national movement to “to preventing childhood trauma and creating a just, healthy, and resilient world.” Current broad strategic goals include creating a common language, educating everybody about ACEs research, supporting and scaling resilience-building programs, engaging champions, increasing funding for trauma-informed and resilience-building research and services, and developing alliances.
On ACEs Connection we have been having virtual NCAR summits, addressing questions that are important to some of the strategic goals. We are now summarizing these discussions, pulling together some of the main ideas and highlighting actionable items. Our first and second questions asked ACEs Connection members about their own experiences learning about ACEs and how other’s can learn about ACEs. Today we look at responses to our third NCAR question—“what should NCAR do next?”.
ACEs Connection members have many suggestions, with ideas that could be implemented at the community and national levels. Here are some of the highlights:
- State summits cumulating in a national summit. People are especially interested in these summits focusing on actionable items, like public policy and messaging. However, because many of us work for non-profits with limited funding, ACEs Connection members hope that a national summit can include people participating through video conference.
- More action at the community level. Individuals want more support in bringing together different sectors and organizations working on ACEs in their communities—including those working in health, education, faith, and social services. Seed funding could help hire community managers who can focus on forging these connections and bridging differences.
- Finding common language. Building on the last point, bringing together people in different sectors requires that NCAR develop a common language to describe ACEs phenomenon. For example, is it childhood adversity or developmental trauma? These clarifications will make communication, and ultimately creating change, easier.
- Fundraising. Building a national movement isn’t easy! Funding is needed for not just community managers, but also trainings and other initiatives. A larger platform, like NCAR can help to draw attention to communities’ initiatives in need of financial support. However, members also suggest that building awareness in their communities can help with fundraising efforts.
- Educate (but keep it personal). Members emphasize the importance of educating politicians, community leaders, and others about ACEs. A letter on “Why ACEs Matter” and signed by the many people in the ACEs movement could help to demonstrate the strength that the movement has gathered so far. However, we must make sure to keep our message personal and relatable, so that ACEs does not just become another popular buzzword that people quickly forget about.
Any other ideas of what NCAR can do next? Feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments below. And thank you again to all the members who participated!
Also, read don’t forget to read the summaries of our first two NCAR virtual summits on convincing the average person to care about ACEs and ACEs “light bulb” moments.
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