A Community Coalition is Born!

Today our group conducted a few straw polls to ordain ourselves with a name, mission, and Pro Tem leaders.  

Looking back we can agree we'd outgrown the party room at Mary's Pizza shack as we have more than 30 regularly participating community partners.  (82 Community Members asked to be on our meeting invite list and participate as they can!)  But were we ready to move from an informal group to a partners united under one mission?

The energy during our meetings always makes the room feel a buzz as we share stories of our similar efforts across the community.  Our members are working to introduce trauma informed approaches at schools, health centers, in a Boys' Home, in a foster care facility, with law enforcement and government agencies, through parenting programs, counseling services, and so much more.  And today we officially banded ourselves together under a new name and mission.  

We are the "Sonoma County ACE's Connection and we work to bring the community together to prevent, heal, and treat ACE's while promoting resiliency."

This new proclamation of our formation as a community coalition is terribly exciting.  Yes, we'll probably rephrase and refine our mission statement in coming months.  Yes, we want further flesh out our values including putting cultural competency to the top of our list.  But we've taken an important first step in agreeing to align our efforts to make an impact on reducing ACE's and building resiliency in Sonoma County.  This is mission critical when 22% of our population is reporting an ACE score of 4 or more.  

Two community partners stepped forward as our Pro Tem Community Chairpersons.  Sue Stephenson, retired MD who most recently worked for Kaiser, and Grace Harris Parent Resources Director at Child Parent Institute will partner together to lead our group.  They'll fill this role temporarily until our group has a Strategic Planning Session and officially votes in leaders who might sign on for a longer term.  With Sue's medical background and Grace's deep experience working to address ACE's and build Resiliency, we'll be in great hands!  

We're making progress on the Roadmap to Resilience!