CRI is proud to announce its 5th annual BPT Conference is going virtual. The theme this year is Resilience through Diversity: The power of trauma-informed DEI practices. BPT is a medium to share and learn from communities around the world. Over two days you will have the option of attending: 6 live presentations, 2 keynotes, 15 pre-recorded on-demand presentations, and on-demand screenings of 'Paper Tigers', 'Resilience' and the premiere of the documentary 'Visceral' with live Q&A...

Inspired her work with ACEs, resilience and Walla Walla’s Community Resilience Initiative , documentary-film director Amy L. Erickson created Visceral: transforming trauma though theatre , which has its first screening at the 5 th Annual “Beyond Paper Tigers” conference June 24-25, 2020. The film features a number of Walla Walla residents, including Etiene Vela, a student at Walla Walla Community College (WWCC), whose life is transformed by performing in WWCC productions with Kevin Loomer,...

Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...

You could say that Ann Penn-Charles, a native of La Push, Washington, was a natural resilience builder even before there was an ACE Study. La Push is a Native American reservation on the western edge of Olympic National Park, where the Quileute Nation ancestors of “Miss Ann”, as she is known, have lived for generations. Although she faced hardships growing up on the reservation, including having her first child when she was a junior in high school, she was able to graduate with the support...

As the Minnesota trainers expected—and welcomed—the ACE trainings in tribal settings began late and lasted for hours: multiple generations of people from the White Earth and Fond du Lac communities gathering around simmering Crock-Pots of food, sharing stories, standing in line to talk with the trainers afterward. Once, a White Earth elder was the only person to show up for a presentation, recalls Linsey McMurrin, Director of Prevention Initiatives and Tribal Projects for FamilyWise Services...

Systematic racism is at the core of mental health disparities and social determinants of mental health (SDoMH).Upstream factors obstruct patient access to needed and appropriate assessment, timely intervention, with treatment for these populations often reflecting poorer quality, and ending prior to completion of treatment. COVID-19 and the recent pandemic have only amplified meso and micro-level gaps in care. considered, provided, and reimbursed.

Rick Griffin knows a lot about hope – how to understand it, instill it, develop it. Griffin is the director of training and curriculum development for the non-profit Community Resilience Initiative (CRI) in Walla Walla, Washington. Walla Walla’s Lincoln High was the subject of a 2015 film, “Paper Tigers,” by the late Jamie Redford, about how the school principal, Jim Sporleder, adopted an ACEs-informed approach that positively transformed the school as well as the surrounding community.

Community Resilience Initiative (CRI), the inspiration behind the Paper Tigers documentary, is partnering with the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC). For more than a decade, CRI has been providing trauma and resilience training to thousands of organizations across the country. What caught DOC’s eye, however, is CRI’s adherence to emerging neuroscience, specifically the focus on inclusive interactions. “Prisons are inherently stressful environments for both incarcerated...