The amazing breakthrough of the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) study – and our new understanding of the dance of society & biology – reveals powerful secrets we can use to transform the quality and effectiveness of mentoring programs.  Experience during development – whether nurturing or toxic – affects the quality of our relationships, self-regulation, health, and school and work performance. This training will provide direct instruction about a cluster of emerging scientific findings that include ACE Study, developmental neuroscience, epigenetics, and resilience research discoveries. Participants will review the ways that toxic stress during development can affect cognition, relationships, health, behavior and patterns of crisis and coping that can affect mentor-mentee experiences.  Washington Data that illuminates community variation in ACEs, community resilience, and health will be introduced.  Participants will explore the implications for this science in their sphere of influence and generate ideas for action that can help to moderate ACE impacts and improve mentoring program outcomes.

Training Objectives 1. Understand and be able to describe the relevance of a cluster of scientific findings to mentoring programs: developmental Neuroscience, Epigenetics, Adverse Childhood Experience, and Resilience (NEAR).  This includes:     a. The effects of toxic stress on development, and the relevance of NEAR science to mentoring programs.       b. The progressive nature of adversity across the life course.     c.  Key variables for improving relational and community context for promotion of resilience. 2. Understand and be able to incorporate into organizational planning, community variation in ACE prevalence in WA. 3. Generate and develop program/system improvement ideas that are informed by NEAR, and hold promise for improving Mentee outcomes. 4. Evaluate the potential for using data that is currently collected in Mentoring programs (as proxy indicators of ACE) to improve program effectiveness.

Cost: $10   Join us for coffee prior to the training.