ACEs Stories & Champions

To view KGTV 10 in San Diego, CA's two-minute video, please click here.

The nationwide movement to give health care workers a safe place to stay is also helping San Diegans on the front lines fighting the coronavirus. RVS 4 MDS matches recreational vehicle owners with medical workers in hopes of minimizing exposure and the chances of bringing the virus into their home. “I don't even have the words for all the family and friends that have reached out to see how they can help us, go grocery shopping for us. Now we have this extra shelter in place to try and...

Dear John, Watching Marriage Story on New Year’s Eve was the ending I needed to witness in order to understand our own. Like Charlie and Nicole, we have history, we share a child, and we both want our child to be raised in an environment where she can thrive. While our similarities don’t stop there, the difference in how their ending started inspired me to follow suit. A mediator encouraged them to write a note of positivity to remember why they got married (together) in the first place.

"Visions to Victory: A People's History of the SR-15 Freeway" is the story of a 40 year community struggle to prevent the neighborhood of City Heights from being divided in half by the SR-15 freeway. Film poster created by Pueblo. This 12-minute documentary details the efforts that lead to the new Mid-City Centerline Stations, the only freeway cover park in California (Teralta Park), the SR-15 Commuter Bikeway, Park De La Cruz, Ward Canyon Park, the City Heights Transit Plaza, the Boulevard...

Are you interested in issues surrounding policing in your area? Do you want to learn how religious leaders are getting involved to build trust and restore the relationship between the police and communities in San Diego County? Take a look at June and July’s newsletters here . On January 31, the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice (Kroc IPJ) at the University of San Diego launched a handbook and website for religious leaders to use to improve relationships and build trust between police and...

This is a wonderful 13 minute video from the NCTSN. LGBTQ young adults talking about trauma experiences as a result of their LGBTQ identity, and how professionals can be helpful to youth facing similar struggles. Here's the link: http://www.nctsnet.org/products/lgbtq-youth-voices-trauma-lives-promise

It’s not every day I get to bring an entire pizza party to 30 kids, but a few weeks ago, that’s exactly what I got to do. I went to visit the youth leaders at Cherokee Point Elementary School , San Diego’s first trauma-informed elementary school. We were celebrating a major accomplishment. A few months ago, I wrote about my visit to Cherokee Point to visit youth leaders and talk about Child Abuse Prevention (CAP) Month, which occurs every April. During my initial visit in March, youth...

A La Jolla man is launching a national effort to help homeless people by practicing yoga. “This is not a new idea,” said Andrew Beinbrink, CEO of SportsForce, a local college recruiting company. “This is already being done in different communities on a small scale, and the evidence of its successful so far is mind-blowing.” Yoga, Beinbrink said, has been proven to reduce traumatic stress, depression, insomnia and addictions. It also has been used to help veterans with post-traumatic stress...

The UC San Diego School of Medicine has promoted Dr. Deepak Chopra from assistant professor to full professor to reflect his growing work with the campus to explore and explain how such things as meditation, yoga and diet affect a person's health. The promotion does not come with a salary. The 68 year-old physician-spiritualist will continue to interact with the university on a voluntary, unpaid basis. He will continue to be based out of the Chopra Center in La Costa, which he co-founded in...

Tucked away on a quiet cul-de-sac in an Escondido neighborhood, a group of mostly Jewish adults with mental illness are gradually taking back their lives. Chesed Home — “chesed” is Hebrew for “loving kindness”, is a 12-bed board-and-care center for the Jewish mentally ill. Its mission is to help residents build the self-sufficiency, working, coping and social skills to permanently transition to independent living. Since Chesed Home opened three years ago, nearly half of its 20 residents have...

Project PAINT: The Prison ArtsINiTiative at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility was started by Laura Pecenco, a sociology professor at Miramar College whose doctorate thesis at UC San Diego was on the performance of masculine in arts creation in prison. Pecenco, an artist herself for her company Hester Crown Jewelry, met with Warden Daniel Paramo in 2013 to discuss the idea of working with inmates to create murals that would decorate visiting areas. The next year, the men created...

Rosa Ana Lozada grew up on a two-block-long street in a San Francisco neighborhood pocked with trauma: domestic violence, child abuse, the frequent wail of police sirens. “It was unsafe to walk the two blocks to the bus stop,” she recalled. “In my community, we learned that police officers were not our friends because they were only seen when bad things happened.” For Lozada, now CEO of Harmonium, Inc., and a member of the San Diego Trauma Informed Guide Team, home and family were the...