ACEs Stories & Champions

Copied from the Yakima Valley Community Foundation website on 10-1-19 In 2015, the Yakima Valley Board of Directors approved a strategic grant to Memorial Hospital. The grant was issued to bring a train-the-trainer model to Yakima County around cultivating trauma-informed practices and building resiliency skills within our community. The National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention delivered the Strengthening Families Train-the-Trainer Curriculum over the course of three days. The...

By Tammy Ayer, for the Yakima Herald, originally published on Dec 2, 2017 Ivan Godinez arrived at Sunnyside High School one recent morning in an angry mood, rudely responding to Principal Ryan Maxwell who noticed Godinez was late and asked him if he was going to class. That’s when teacher Felix DeLeon stepped in. “He’s like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ He calmed me down,” Godinez said of DeLeon, who immediately took the teen aside and talked with him privately rather than confronting him in anger. A...