In Photo: (L) Donielle Prince, ACN Bay Area Community Facilitator and (R) Nicole Powell, Branch Librarian, North Branch Berkeley Public Library

Meeting Summary

ACEs Connection Network continues to support communities that are interested in building cross sector collaboratives aimed at creating and growing resilient communities. Several of these collaboratives have started across the county. Click here for a list of profiles of California ACN communities.  

After initial interest in the meeting announcement, 7 of us met in the community room at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public library to discuss convening a Berkeley focused community collaborative.  

We discussed what brought us to the table, and discovered a shared vision of taking action steps to educate the Berkeley community about ACEs, trauma impacts, trauma informed practice and resilience building practices.

Each participant had a broad vision for a resilient community, and also shared how they were seeking support and ideas to bring trauma informed practice and resilience into their work. The sectors present at this initial gathering included public health, school, faith-based, and mental health fields. One participant, after hearing the program challenges experienced across sectors in the Berkeley community, commented, “Resilience is the answer”. 

We even identified a few possible first steps, including agreeing to meet regularly. Our next scheduled meeting will be on January 29, at the same location and time: Berkeley Library, North Branch, 4:00-5:30. An announcement with RSVP instructions will be posted on this page during the first week of January. In February, seek out the new page, coming soon, for this new Berkeley collaborative!

Initial activities we have outlined include:

• Using the ACN sector tool to begin outreach to include as many sectors as possible, early in the group’s formation;
• Planning an educational screening of the film Resilience (already, a member may have access to the film for community viewings);
• Identifying an early plan to educate city and county officials about ACEs 101, as well as outline policy steps that officials can consider;
• Creating a page for this community collaborative on ACEs Connection Network! As soon as we have a name, so the page should be up shortly after the January 29 meeting.