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Roanoke Valley Trauma Informed Community Network (VA)

The Roanoke Valley Trauma Informed Community Network seeks to connect organizations to better understand, prevent, and address ACEs & trauma in our community. The RVTICN features a learning cohort of organizations who are delving into the work of creating trauma-informed systems. We provide training & resources and believe that through these connections, we can build resiliency.

"A Better Normal" Community Discussion Series- Our Reckoning with Race and Equity at ACEs Connection

 

At noon on  Tuesday, October 27, ACEs Connection staff invite you all to join us as we share about our race and equity journey.

Click here to register.

We are hardly experts in race and equity- in fact, we are really just beginning. But by putting in consistent effort over the past several months, we have already made important shifts both internally as an organization, as well as through the content we reflect on the network. We have a long way yet to go.

Our journey started with not reckoning. Then, we took that first step; stumbling; then ultimately recommitting. We’d like to share with the ACEs Connection community about our process of incorporating equitable practices in our organization, and in becoming more purposeful in addressing racial  and historical trauma as an organization. We hope that you will dialogue and share with us as well. We know we have much to learn from you all.

A Brief Background on our Journey

In July 2019, ACEs Connection staff held our first race and equity workgroup meeting. We met to brainstorm an approach, and our colleague Ingrid Cockhren advised us to take a step back and to do some staff-wide fundamental education about race and equity. Ingrid has a background in diversity, equity and inclusion training, and offered to lead this work for our team.

Post training, there was a gap in our race and equity work, a gap that was highlighted when George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, MN on May 25, 2020, after being held down with Chauvin’s knee on his neck for eight minutes, while handcuffed. The murder was caught on video, and sparked nationwide social and political protest against racially motivated, and systemically unaccountable, police brutality.

Staff at ACEs Connection wanted to make a statement denouncing this brutal display of systemic racial injustice, and we realized that the race and equity workgroup would have been the best space to draft this statement. We were regretful that we had not prioritized the workgroup since the first phase of our training concluded, and so we resolved to meet weekly, which we have done since June 18, 2020. Setting, and keeping, this meeting time has been a key component in our race and equity commitment at ACEs Connection. Please see this post to read the reflections from our race and equity workgroup members about our equity process thus far.

Below are a few of the ways race and equity is reflected in our content on ACEs Connection as a result of our internal training, and workgroup process, with more to come:

Anti-Racism Resources List

Ep.7 - Racial Health Inequities of COVID-19 [A Better Normal Series]

Ep.17 - Systems Transformation [A Better Normal]

Ep.25 - Racial Trauma & How to be Anti-Racist [A Better Normal Series]

Ep.28 - LGBTQ+ Identity and Race in the US: An Intersectional Discussion [A Better Normal Series]

Ep. 32 - Reinterpreting American Identity [A Better Normal Series]

Ep.52 - Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? Concerns and solutions. [A Better Normal]

Ep.54 Real Talk with Rafael [A Better Normal Series]

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