Blog

By Christopher Flavelle, Photo: Edmund D. Fountain, The New York Times, July 25, 2022 Two summers ago, Hurricane Laura wrecked Betty Swope’s modest bungalow at the edge of Lake Charles, a city surrounded by oil refineries in southwest Louisiana. The Federal Emergency Management Agency helped at first, paying for Ms. Swope and her son Adrian to stay in hotels, then putting a trailer in their yard and providing about $7,000 toward fixing their house. But that covered a fraction of what repairs...

By Natalie Lu, Photo: Natalie Lu, EdSource, July 25, 2022 I didn’t expect to fall apart so quickly. After transferring to University of California Berkeley in the midst of a pandemic, I assumed I was resilient. But the hard truth hit me faster than a car on a California freeway when I practically lost my mind my senior year. Before this, in 2019, I lost my grandfather to dementia, and months after, suddenly had to navigate a pandemic that could have also taken my grandmother. For a bit, I...

By Petula Dvorak, Photo: Amanda Voisard/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, July 25, 2022 “It’s a whole different generation,” Barbara Mickles said out loud, to no one in particular, shaking her head and adding a grandmotherly “mmm-hmmm” to underscore the absurdity of $100 sneakers on ever-growing kid feet. Mickles, 62, was watching a swarm of kids, including a few of her 16 grandchildren, go giddy over sneakers — Nike, Adidas, Champion. All the hot brands. Back in Arkansas, Shoe...

Last Chance! Applications are due 8/15! 16 Strong Project is excited to be recruiting for our Youth Advocacy Board! Our goal is to involve youth in our program and resource development as well as provide guidance to this group to be leaders and advocates around ACEs in their own schools and communities. Together, we are combatting the youth mental health crisis by empowering youth leaders and uplifting youth voices. We are looking for a group of creative, resourceful, hard-working youth ages...

Californians Support AB 2660. Write now!

Community violence can occur suddenly and without warning leaving many youth and families with a heightened sense of fear. Common types of community violence that affect youth include, but are not limited to, individual and group conflicts (e.g., bullying, fights among gangs and other groups, shootings in public areas such as schools, community parks, or neighborhoods). When these events happen, youth and families may experience a wide range of reactions including shock, anger, fear, loss,...

Disability justice organizers have developed tremendous knowledge and creative approaches to care, safety, and preventing and stopping violence. How do disability justice strategies and knowledge inform transformative justice practices? In this video, disability justice and transformative justice organizers Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarsinha and Elliott Fukui explore some of the intersections of these movements. VA TICNs Annual Survey Please take a moment to fill out the annual VA TICNs survey...

Providers, practitioners, patients, and their supports have long dealt with public scrutiny over the decision to terminate an unintended, unviable, if not potentially life-threatening pregnancy. Yet, amid the post-Roe v. Wade era, it has become tougher to receive and render necessary care; a new dimension of trauma is being unleashed for all involved.

This course is for you, if you work with youth and want to learn about Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) and Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) in a self-paced, virtual environment. Learn how to support youth who have trauma stories. Whether you have some background on ACEs research or not, this course not only provides the research on ACEs, but also offers research based practical strategies to implement right away. If the thought of taking time off or giving up some of your summer for...

By Jane McMullen, Photo: Getty Images, British Broadcasting Corporation, July 23, 2022 Thirty years ago, a bold plan was cooked up to spread doubt and persuade the public that climate change was not a problem. The little-known meeting - between some of America's biggest industrial players and a PR genius - forged a devastatingly successful strategy that endured for years, and the consequences of which are all around us. On an early autumn day in 1992, E Bruce Harrison, a man widely...

By David A. Taylor, Photo: Hampton University Archives, The Washington Post, July 19, 2022 For several days in June last year, I found myself driving through Virginia on the trail of undercover historians. I was working on a podcast about the Federal Writers’ Project, which had sent researchers across the state during the 1930s to talk with formerly enslaved Virginians. These historians, all of whom were Black, were undercover in the sense that had they been too obvious in their aim to...

By Rhitu Chatterjee, Photo: Saul Martinez/NPR, National Public Radio, July 24, 2022 Shortly after Elizabeth George started her freshman year in high school last fall, her parents tested positive for COVID-19. And Elizabeth stepped up to take care of them. "I was running the house, sort of," says the soft-spoken 15-year-old. "I was giving them medicine, seeing if everyone is OK." Elizabeth's mother recovered, but her father was hospitalized. He died in September of last year. [ Please click...