March 2023

By Steve Helling and Wendy Grossman Kantor, People, March 2023 The daughter of a Jamaican-born pastor and a seamstress, Kathy McGibbon Givens recalls struggling to fit in with her peers. And when her parents divorced and moved her from Canada to Houston in her sophomore year of high school, “everything was bigger, everything was faster,” Givens says. “High school was just me being a chameleon. If a guy would say, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so pretty,’ the next thing I knew I was doing his homework.

By Felipe Mercado, Photo: Unsplash, Psychology Today, March 26, 2023 Trauma is a pervasive issue affecting individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and socioeconomic statuses, but youth of color and those living in poverty are particularly vulnerable to experiencing trauma due to systemic inequalities and oppressive societal structures. This can include exposure to violence, racism , and poverty-related stressors, which can have lasting effects on mental health and well-being. Compassion is a...

By Anna Gallegos-Cannon, WPLN News, March 28, 2023 Dr. Katherine Koonce was one of the six people killed Monday at Covenant School , but the head of the private Christian school will be remembered for the positive impact she had on her students and friends. “She was just a dynamo, and she honored humanity so much. She had such a deep, abiding respect for the sacredness of life,” Anna Caudill told This Is Nashville on Tuesday . Caudill met Koonce when as a high school teacher at Christ...

Spring has arrived! Don't miss your chance to sign-up for Stop It Now!'s signature child sexual abuse prevention trainings, Awareness to Action and Training of Trainers , this season; our Awareness to Action session is already filling up! Learn about our upcoming courses and register below, or visit our training page to learn more about Circles of Safety and explore our other training dates in 2023. Circles of Safety: Awareness to Action for Youth-Serving Professionals Overview: In a virtual...

By Nick Gray, Diana Leyva, Craig Shoup, Kirsten Fiscus, Rachel Wegner, and Melissa Brown, The Nashville Tennesean, March 30, 2023 Recap: Three children and three adult staff members were killed Monday at Covenant School in one of Tennessee's deadliest school shootings . Audrey Hale, 28, entered the school at about 10:11 a.m. armed with a rifle. Officers who responded to the scene killed Hale about 10 minutes later. Video footage shows a timeline from when Hale first got to the school until...

By Junlei Li, 3/29/23, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ Throughout the Week of HOPE, we will be sharing stories of practicing the HOPE framework. As we conclude our first day of the HOPE Summit , we can reflect on the ways to promote HOPE many different settings. The interview below is a great example of how to practice the HOPE framework in educational settings. Junlei Li, a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education shares the impact of human relationships on...

People protested against hate crimes targeting Asian Americans in New York City in 2021. JOHN LAMPARSKI/NURPHOTO, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS By Weihua Li and Jamiles Lartey, The Marshall Project, March 25, 2023 Hate crimes reported to the FBI by law enforcement agencies rose from more than 8,000 in 2020 to nearly 11,000 the following year, according to updated statistics released last week. Crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Sikhs and bisexual people all more than doubled.

Majida Begum, 60, whose home was washed away in June 2022 floods in the Sunamganj, northern Bangladesh. Here Begum stands under an elevated canopy of bitter gourd vines – a vegetable garden designed to survive if and when her village floods again. Fatima Tuj Johora for NPR By Lauren Frayer, National Public Radio (NPR), March 26, 2023 Majida Begum squats in the mud where her kitchen used to be, scaling fish with a dull blade. Seasonal floods are a part of life on the riverbank where Begum...

Mental Health First Aid and Emotional CPR are the two most popular approaches to training laymen to support people in distress. Some say there are both pros and cons.(Patrick Hruby / Los Angeles Times) By Laura Newberry and Jaclyn Cosgrove, Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2023 A fact of life is that at some point, at many points, we all suffer. Every single one of us knows what it’s like to be completely overwhelmed by a situation, a feeling, the state of our minds or the messiness of our...

By Lily Levine, Photo: iStock, Prism, March 23, 2023 On April 1, state agencies will begin reviewing current enrollees’ eligibility to remain covered by Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), initiating a nationwide unwinding process . According to estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services, 15 million people may lose coverage once the continuous enrollment provision ends. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act originally authorized the continuous...

By Adilia Watson, Illustration: From article, The Imprint, March 16, 2023 Achild’s mother thrown to the floor. A mom screaming “I love you!” as she’s shoved into a squad car. Cops drawing guns. Cuffs out. A beloved pet shot. The house torn apart, toys broken. These are the images that can stick with kids when their parents are arrested. But in upstate New York, a network of law enforcement, court officials, social service providers and community activists are hoping to alter these...

By Chris Conway THE NEW YORK TIMES, Senior Staff Editor, Opinion.March 29, 2023 Being a kid today isn’t what it used to be, and if you’re a kid, that generally seems to be a good thing. Especially when it comes to working. Around the turn of the 20th century, children as young as 10, and sometimes younger, were working — in dangerous settings like factories and mines, on farms and in home businesses, according to a history of child labor by Michael Schuman, which was published in the Monthly...