3rd Annual Gathering, Addressing ACEs: Growing Resilient Communities - Minnesota Communities Caring for Children

WELCOME to Growing Resilient Communities

3rd Annual Gathering of Collaboratives Addressing ACEs

Gathering Recordings & Handouts

Welcome! On this website you will find links to recordings and handouts from the Growing Resilient Communities: The 3rd Annual Gathering of Collaboratives Addressing ACEs

This event was offered to develop and implement community-wide approaches to Building Self-Healing Communities. Communities all over Minnesota are engaging their members and local creativity to heal, build resilience, and reduce the impact of ACEs – both Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adverse Community Environments. These efforts are needed now more than ever in the face of pandemic and uprising. This event provided an opportunity for partners across MN communities to share their collective wisdom to address the questions and challenges we are facing today, from the impacts of physical distancing to the pre-existing inequities that cannot be ignored, and more!

This event and resources were brought to you by the Minnesota Department of Human Services & Minnesota Communities Caring for Children, with additional support from the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and BlueShield of Minnesota

Not very familiar with NEAR (Neurobiology, Epigenetics, ACEs & Resiliency) science? Click HERE to access the Conference Pre-reads.

General Handouts and Flyers

Handouts for specific breakout sessions can be found in the breakout session descriptions.

Recordings and Handouts from Wednesday, June 24^th Workshops

A Deeper Dive into the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey & Other Data Sources with Melissa Adolfson & Jacquie Freund

Handouts:

During this session, we will dive into four separate topics. For each topic, we'll present findings in our presentation slide deck; share a new infographic, fact sheet, or resource guide; and hold a brief Q + A session. The four topics include:

Youth with an incarcerated parent/caregiver
Mental health and ACEs
Absenteeism and ACEs
Sources of ACEs and resilience data beyond the Minnesota Student Survey

We'll wrap up by recommending ways to use these data as outcome measures in Community Resilience Plans.

Melissa Adolfson

Jacquie Freund

Click Here to View Recording

A Deeper Dive into the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey & Other Data Sources with Melissa Adolfson & Jacquie Freund

Link: https://bit.ly/MSSRecording

Time: 1 hour & 12 minutes

Trauma across Generations: The Impact of Historical Trauma with Sam Simmons

Handouts & Resources:

SamuelSimmonsConsulting.com
Community Empowerment through Black Men Healing Conference - August 13th &14th, 2020
- Register HERE!

This workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to explore the link between Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs), historical trauma, and the connection to current disparities impacting Indigenous and African American people and communities. The workshop will be interactive, with opportunities to discuss practical culturally sensitive trauma-informed practices.

Sam Simmons

Trauma across Generations: The Impact of Historical Trauma with Sam Simmons

Loving What Is: Grief as a Path to Joy with Drake Powe

Handouts & Resources:

Aligned with our work to build individual and community resilience and healing, this workshop will highlight calming and grounding practice that supports us in not missing the good as we are faced with challenges.

Drake Powe

Drake Powe has studied and practiced meditation for over forty years and has been teaching it for over twenty-five.
In 1999, he became a certified yoga instructor. Having struggled with sports-related injuries throughout his life, yoga is a great instrument for healing and mitigating pain. Blending meditation with his own unique approach to Kripalu yoga, He’s also used my practice to help himself and others cope with complications caused by injury and aging.

His practice was created out of a need to ground, understand, and heal himself, and has grown into a lifelong love for meditation. He’s dedicated my life to sharing this deep and abiding passion for practice by helping others reach fulfillment. We all have our own internal North Star. Practice is about realigning our inner compass to get us back on track. It’s about bringing us to ourselves.

Loving What Is: Grief as a Path to Joy with Drake Powe

Recordings and Handouts from Thursday, June 25th Workshops

Keynote Speech: Safety & Self-Healing in Place with Laura Porter

Handouts:

Safetly & Self-Healing in Place with Laura Porter 2020

Place matters. In this time when human contact is virtual for so many people so much of the time, we still have important work building Self-Healing Communities. The kinds of help that community can provide – delivering food, fixing a broken window or porch step, making a parade of warm wishes – these kinds of help cannot be replaced by the virtual world. What is our work now, in preparation for the times ahead? How are communities across the nation using this time to generate habits of learning and sharing? In this session, Laura Porter will explain how the cycles of living systems can be used to optimize our efforts during the pandemic, and share community and state examples of emergent community strengths as well as system challenges that are illuminated by the pandemic.

Laura Porter

For nearly two decades, Laura Porter directed a statewide family-community-state partnership that successfully implemented ACE Study concepts in Washington State. In partnership with over 30 communities and nine Tribes, she developed a model for increasing the capacity of communities to prevent ACEs and their effects. A stunning success from the model, including a reduction in the rates of major social and health problems, are document in peer-reviewed journals, an article titled “Self-Healing Communities,” published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and in the documentary “Resilience” by KPJR Films.

Laura now works with leaders in over 30 states, providing education, facilitation, and empowerment strategies for building Self-Healing Communities. She provides support and services to a wide range of groups… from parents and youth who are convening neighborhood conversations, to philanthropic leaders and government officials who are using ACE science in investment and policy decisions. She and Dr. Robert Anda founded ACE Interface to help leaders to use ACE concepts to build Self-Healing Communities.

Laura loves to travel, garden, learn, and play with her children and grandchildren.

Click Here to View Recording

Safety & Self-Healing in Place with Laura Porter

Link: https://bit.ly/LauraPorter

Time: 1 hour & 10 minutes

Findings from the 100 Cups of Coffee Interview Project Pilot with Melissa Adolfson & Melodie Hanson

Handouts:

Several Minnesota communities participated in a pilot data collection process called 100 Cups of Coffee. The purpose of the process was to gather input from individuals who may not be able to participate in Community Resilience Conversations, or who may not feel comfortable opening up in a group setting. During this session, we'll briefly describe the process, and share lessons learned from pilot communities--what worked well, and what could be improved. Some communities can reflect on differences between pre-COVID-19 face-to-face conversations over actual coffee, compared to post-COVID-19 telephone conversations.

Melissa Adolfson

Melodie Hanson

Click Here to View Recording

Findings from the 100 Cups of Coffee Interview Project Pilot with Melissa Adolfson & Melodie Hanson

Link: https://bit.ly/Gathering100cups

Time: 1 hour & 11 minutes

Tools & Practices to Strengthen Individual & Collective Resilience with Susan Beaulieu

Handouts:

Join Susan Beaulieu in an experiential session to learn a variety of practices you can use in your own life, and share with others, to strengthen individual and collective resilience. Susan draws on Mind-Body Medicine, neurobiology and more to understand how we respond to stress and trauma in our bodies and what we can practice to calm our nervous systems in the face of moment to moment stressors, while also releasing childhood and intergenerational trauma.

Susan Beaulieu

Click Here to View Recording

Tools & Practices to Strengthen Individual & Collective Resilience with Susan Beaulieu

Link: https://bit.ly/SusanBeaulieu

Time: 1 hour & 13 minutes

Health Disparities & COVID-19: The Political Determinants of Health with Dr. Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon

Handouts:

Political Determinants of Health and COVID-19

"Disparities in the state of Minnesota persist and are not random nor unpredictable."

- Advancing Health Equity in Minnesota (2014 MDH Report)

Social determinants of Health and Healthy People 2020 have attempted to address the national problem of inequities experienced by low income, diverse communities without effective progress. COVID-19 shines a helpful light on the situation and what could be developed with this new and glaring evidence that the status of people of color is not improving.

Dr. Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon

Antonia Maria Apolinário-Wilcoxon, Ed.D., Equity Strategies, LLC, principal consultant, provides direction and leadership in efforts of private, public, and collaborative efforts working to improve the lives of disenfranchised and vulnerable persons impacted by inequities. Dr. Apolinário-Wilcoxon obtained her doctorate degree in education focusing on critical studies informed by Critical Pedagogy theorists. An African-Brazilian, she brings experiences in education, corporate, private nonprofits, and government to lead efforts that bring agency, voice and liberation in spaces where the presence of Oppression, bias and other barriers, silence those most valuable voices to find solutions to problems in their world.

Dr. Apolinário-Wilcoxon’s approach is one of listening deeply and exercising inquiry to enable wisdom and insights to emerge. Her facilitation is participatory, inclusive, resourceful, caring, and thoughtful. Trained in Respectful Conversations, Kaleidoscope Institute Faith-Based Facilitation, Technology of Participation (Institute of Cultural Affairs), and Art of Hosting/Art of Participatory Leadership, she blends these methodologies to more responsively attend to her audience’s needs and motivation.

Click Here to View Recording

Health Disparities & COVID-19: The Political Determinants of Health with Dr. Antonia Apolinario-Wilcoxon

Link: https://bit.ly/AntoniaWilcoxon

Time: 43 minutes