Blog

This is the final installment in Villa of Hope's 3-part series on adaptive change in organizations. We started with REBUILD, continued with RECOVER, and now we will finish with "RENEW: Adaptive Change to RENEW Personal Resilience, Organizational Vision, and Your Brand." Enjoy!

In recent years, there have been alarming reports of increased anxiety among young people. Trends like the growing influence of social media, increased competition to get into college, and changing sexual norms put tremendous pressures on our kids. But many of these pressures are exacerbated for girls—especially girls of color, argues psychologist Lisa Damour, author of the new book Under Pressure . Girls face headwinds that boys don’t, including a narrow standard of beauty, prejudice around...

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again. —Rumi The way to stop climate change might be buried in 300 square feet of earth in the Venice neighborhood of Los ­Angeles, amid kale and potatoes. A half-dozen city youth are digging through the raised bed on a quiet side street, planting tomato seedlings between peach and lime trees. Nineteen-year-old ­Calvin sweats as he works the rake. There’s a lot at stake here. The formerly homeless...

Newcomer immigrant youth – refugees, asylum seekers, and unaccompanied children – face unique challenges when involved with the juvenile justice system, say a team of mental health and legal experts who have published a new book on the topic. Co-authored by UConn Health psychiatrist Julian Ford, the book seeks to raise awareness about those challenges among some of the first people that the youth will meet: juvenile court judges and advocates. In A Trauma-Informed Approach to Judicial...

PHILADELPHIA — Built as a punishing fortress in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary sat a mile and a half outside Philadelphia, isolated behind 30-foot walls, a model of solitary confinement imitated around the world. The prison remained in use for the next 142 years, even as Philadelphia grew around it. It closed in 1971; then the site was rescued in the 1980s and stabilized, preserved in a permanent state of decay. Today, the brick and stone of the vaulted ceilings are crumbling. Layers of...

A new report produced by Asset Funders Network (ANF), in collaboration with the Closing the Women's Wealth Gap (CWWG) and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development reveals the current economic reality for millennial women and the primary drivers contributing to their wealth inequities. The report, Clipped Wings: Closing the Wealth Gap for Millennial Women , is the second in a series of publications that explores how the gender wealth gap impacts women. Representing 31.5% of the...

America has largely given up trying to desegregate its schools . Politicians have capitulated to reactionary white parents and activists who have successfully fought for decades against the government's hesitant efforts to provide equal resources and opportunities for students of color. The result has been a disaster for non-white students , for public education and for the U.S. as a whole. In the 1950s and 1960s, educational segregation, along with voting rights, was the iconic issue of the...

The American Psychologist journal published a new special issue that features the latest psychological research on racial trauma. Feminist psychologist and clinical practitioner, Dr. Lillian Comas-Díaz and her colleagues, introduced the special issue and its mission to foreground novel conceptual models of racial trauma, promote healing on individual and collective levels, and highlight consideration of historical racial injuries. The special issue provides a contemporary examination of...

Great new Resource from CDC shared with me from Dr. Kevin Sherin, Health Officer & Director of Florida Department of Health in Orange County, Florida. Welcome to the Connections Selector! This tool makes it easier for you to connect the dots and explore the relationships between multiple types of violence and the risk and protective factors they share at each level of the social-ecological model (SEM). A clear understanding of these connections can help you plan strategies to prevent...

In 2017, Dr. Audrey Stillerman and three other women from the Chicago healthcare community founded the THEN Center . Its goal is lofty: By 2025, it wants every graduating student in medical and health sciences across the United States to apply core concepts of childhood adversity, neurobiology, resilience and health equity into their work. Dr. Audrey Stillerman Today, the THEN Center (The Collaborative Study of Trauma, Health Equity and Neurobiology) is well on its way. Its founders are...

By Emily Thornton | March 10, 2019 Everyone has experienced some kind of trauma, experts say, and people need to know how to work through it to help others also facing traumatic events. That was the message presented to 35 representatives from various local organizations who attended a Community Resilience Initiative training on Friday in the Walla Walla Airport conference room sponsored by United Way of Walla Walla and organized by Walla Walla’s Community Council Speakers discussed...

“I so don’t belong on this team!” I think to myself swearing under my breath as I sit in a meeting with my colleagues analyzing a problem we are having. One of my colleagues has just described a technical concept in such beautiful depth that I feel completely out of place. When I compare myself to her, I find myself utterly lacking. I tell myself that I was supposed to know that. I feel like a fraud and I just want to hide. I feel myself retreating, less inclined to contribute and more...