Most ACEs Connection members know we’re nearly 25,000 strong...and growing! Some are surprised to learn we host more than 160 communities.
The ACEs Connection home page is just a glimpse of what is going on worldwide in the ACEs movement to help prevent and heal childhood trauma, and build resilience. Behind this home page, there are more than 160 communities where thousands of people work to advance trauma-informed and resilience-building practices in their own geographic- and/or interest-based areas.
The types of communities hosted and supported by ACEs Connection include:
- Communities in U.S. neighborhoods, cities, counties, regions, and states that have ACEs, trauma-informed or resilience-building initiatives (e.g., Sonoma County ACEs Connection) that are supported by ACEs Connection. We have 108 geographic-based communities.
- Communities globally. We have seven communities in countries or regions outside the U.S. (e.g., West Africa ACEs Connection).
- Communities organized around a sector or a topic (e.g., ACEs in Education). We have 37 sector/interest-based communities.
- Communities anchored or led by one organization and working with others within specific sectors and/or geographic areas (e.g., Benchmarks’ Partnering for Excellence). We have 16 organizational communities.
Join with them! You’ll advance the movement and you, too, may benefit from what resilience science shows to be healing and helpful for everyone: connection. As a member of a community you can:
- Connect with others in your area who are committed to ACEs science.
- Help prevent trauma and build resilience in your community.
- Become a leader in the ACEs movement.
You can join an existing community (check out the communities section to see if there’s an ACEs initiative in your city, county, region, state or country….or join an interest-based community). If you’re part of an ACEs initiative, and it doesn’t have a community on ACEs Connection, we’ll help you start one so that you can see what other communities are doing and share best practices with them. Or, if there’s no ACEs initiative in your city, county, region or state, we’ll help you launch one.
Through our Growing Resilient Communities 2.0 framework, we provide guidelines to launch and grow local ACEs initiatives, and we can provide resources for different trauma-informed and resilient-building community models. We also provide tools, such as our Presentations Tracker (here is Northeast Tennessee ACEs Connection’s tracker), to help communities measure their progress.
Communities with ACEs initiatives connect individual ACE champions to brainstorm, network, strategize, share presentations, and engage cross-sector groups to do boots-on-the ground work to change our systems to build compassion and acceptance in schools, juvenile justice centers, daycare centers, physicians’ offices, hospitals, community centers, police stations, universities, city councils, state legislatures, and more — all to prevent ACEs, heal trauma, and create resilience.
There's no doubt that integrating practices based on ACEs science can solve our most intractable problems. Here’s what happened in Cowlitz County, WA, when they integrated the Self-Healing Community Model:
Over 10 to 15 years:
- Births to teen mothers went down 62%;
- Infant mortality went down 43%;
- Youth suicide and suicide attempts went down 98%;
- Youth arrests for violent crime dropped 53%;
- High school dropout rates decreased by 47%.
As communities are created, we’ll announce them in a blog post on the main network so you can learn more or join. We’ll also summarize all new communities every Wednesday in the weekly roundup.
Among our newest communities are:
- Florida ACEs Connection
- West Virginia ACEs Connection
- Alliant International University
- Raising Resilient Oklahomans
- West Africa ACEs Connection
Did You Know You Have a Community Facilitator?
Community facilitators will
- Help you find and join an existing community
- Help you start or grow an ACEs initiative
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