Each year millions of Americans face the reality of living with mental health struggles. The collective trauma of COVID-19 has exasperated our country’s mental health crisis.
In honor of May's designation as Mental Health Awareness Month, co-hosts of the History. Culture. Trauma. podcasts Ingrid Cockhren, CEO of PACEs Connection, and Mathew Portell, director of communities, speak with guests about our country's science, support, education, advocacy, and policies focused on mental health.
This week's episode—at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET, Thursday—features an encore of an interview with Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz.
Lewis-Pankratz is a learning centers director and poverty consultant. She regularly speaks on rural poverty and systems, including foster care, and how they affected her journey.
Despite growing up in addiction and poverty, Lewis-Pankratz was able, against all odds, to fight her way out of poverty. Her journey from the trailer park where she was living with her three young sons began in 2011 when she connected with a local poverty resolution project.
Lewis-Pankratz later went to work for that non-profit, and went on to build multiple projects like it to help more families.
More about Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz
Today Lewis-Pankratz works with communities and schools across the US to solve poverty and heal trauma. She does this by helping caring leaders create sustainable ecosystems of resilience based on building better relationships.
In 2015, Lewis-Pankratz started working with public education and ignited a trauma-informed schools movement in her state and beyond. From her experience of trauma and poverty, and by accessing buffering relationships, Lewis-Pankratz healed from both poverty and addiction and continues to light the path for others.
Lewis-Pankratz and her team have partnered with Youth Core Ministries out of Greensburg, Kansas, to establish and sustain poverty resolution projects across Kansas and Illinois. Currently, they are working with over 200 families who are systematically building their paths out of poverty. Lewis-Pankratz is widely known in Kansas and across the United States for her extensive work in building trauma-informed schools.
Tune in Thursday at 1 p.m. PT; 4 .m. ET.
Comments (0)