Who Are We?
We are a coalition of diverse organizations providing ways and means to heal trauma and build healthy, sustainable, just, and peaceful communities. We achieve our vision by-
developing leadership
providing and creating resources to be used in the healing of trauma
making resources available for other communities that have suffered trauma.
The following non-profit organizations are founding members of the coalition:
Turning Point Partners with a mission to develop and establish restorative, strength-based systems in schools, courts, and communities. The TPP approach focuses on the talents and gifts of young people and their families to overcome the high-risk conditions under which they live; it emphasizes the restoration of relationships; and it draws upon the inherent power of communities to facilitate systemic change.
The Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program of Eastern Mennonite University provides local leaders and caregivers with the skills and understandings to increase their capacity to provide for the long-term healing needs in their communities. STAR’s post-Katrina response will build on the knowledge and experience developed during the past four years of providing trainings for leaders and caregivers in communities affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
Community United to Reform Education (CURE) was established in 2001 for the purpose of providing a quality education for every child. The mission of CURE is to create environments that trigger the interaction and integration of cognition, affect, and behavior; thereby providing the tools for youth and adults to become self motivated and self directed learners.
Free To Be Kids Child Development Center is a community based educational support system for the family. It is a Twenty-four (24) hour Child Development Center, designed with the child and their educational needs in mind. Free to be Kids is the total development of all children by creating a learning space that nurture children's cognitive, physical, emotional and social development
Louisiana Violence Prevention Alliance is a statewide alliance of volunteers working together to prevent violence through education, awareness, and peaceful action. The organization’s objectives are to create peaceful communities through education, training, community organizing and collaboration between organizations. The Alliance perceives and addresses violence as a public health issue.
PH Youth Home-Retreat Camp works with at-risk youth and their families by creating a safe place for urban youth in a rural community setting. Our goal is to prevent young people from entering the criminal justice system.
We are a group of non-profit agencies who often work in collaboration to improve life quality by initiating and supporting systemic change. We are leading edge organizations in the fields of education, justice, and childcare. Individual members are social workers, public school teachers, college professors, counselors, trauma specialists, art therapists, and early childcare practitioners.
Conditions in much of New Orleans prior to the hurricane were less than acceptable. One of the communities in which we partner is a typical New Orleans neighborhood that has high negative data in all essential measures: poverty, literacy, and health; 67% of families with children under 5 years old fall below the poverty line. The lead partner in this particular community, Community United To Reform Education, developed after-school programs, a summer camp, and a restaurant run by the elementary school students.
Katrina and then Rita changed the landscape of our environment. The challenges we faced originally – poverty, racism, violence, and an education system in which many children did not have textbooks – were exacerbated by the massive disruption in the everyday lives of residents and the breakdown of the systems on which they had been dependent, flawed as they might be. Turning Point Partners, a leading practitioner of Restorative Justice in the region, opened exploratory talks with Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), an institution that had trained hundreds of community leaders and caregivers in the wake of the September 11th attack. The discussion led to a realization that the trauma evoked by the hurricanes required a new perspective to meet the cultural needs of Gulf Coast residents.
As a result of the exploration, leaders from our diverse groups came together at EMU to focus on the needs of people returning to their homes and those in the diaspora who must adapt their lives to a new culture. Those of us meeting were well suited to understand these needs. We, too, are individuals who experienced the trauma associated with the hurricanes directly or vicariously. Adapting techniques designed to elicit expression and honest interaction, we envisioned Circles of Hope as one answer to the traumatic experience caused by the hurricanes as well as the historical, cultural, and societal trauma reawakened by the events.
The task is not short term. In a few months, many of the current resources will no longer be available to these people. Our efforts are long-term. Our model is designed to be there after most services have left, but before many traumatic responses to the disasters have been healed or even revealed. We hope you will be with us through this journey. Your support is solicited, appreciated, and necessary.