Attitude of Gratitude - Spotlight on Community Partners Addressing Racial Trauma

Healing, Leading, Changing – Addressing Trauma Caused by Racism and Creating Healing Spaces for All Youth                        

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Racial trauma, when left unaddressed, can have long-term negative effects on children and youth, impacting their mental and physical health, development, and overall well-being. There is good news - healing is possible.

‍Through access to high-quality, trauma-informed programs, it is possible to reverse the negative impact of the trauma caused by racism. Building on a decade of work to advance the field of childhood trauma, Bright Promises launched the Healing, Leading, Changing initiative to provide community organizations with funding and support to develop, test, implement, document, and disseminate strategies for addressing childhood trauma caused by racism.

Trauma = Inability to thrive. Racism = Trauma.

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Racism is an under-recognized and often invisible cause of childhood trauma that is impacting hundreds of thousands of young people in our communities. Racial trauma can be caused by a single event or multiple events, which may build upon one another. In this way, childhood trauma can be cumulative and persistent. If left unaddressed, racial trauma can have long term, negative effects on a child's mental, physical, and emotional health and development.

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Events that can cause racial trauma in children and youth include  

• Threats of harm and injury
• Humiliating and shaming events (like being followed in a store or someone moving away from you on the bus)
• Witnessing racial discrimination and violence
• Microaggressions toward yourself or others  

One recent study found that Black adolescents on average experience racial discrimination more than five times a day in the form of microagressions online leading to depressive symptoms.

Racial trauma impacts all of us, however, healing is possible.

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Racism is the root of most inequity.  Racial trauma can be experienced by an individual or a group. Racial trauma can also be vicarious, systemic, and historical. In this way, racial trauma impacts all of us. There is a pervasive need to intentionally acknowledge and address the trauma caused by racism, especially in children and youth.

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‍It is possible to reverse the negative impact of the trauma caused by racism through trauma-informed programs. Currently, there are not enough trauma-informed programs in Metro Chicago that intentionally help children to heal from racial trauma and develop resilience. Bright Promises is working to change this.  

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This year, Bright Promises partnered with 13 community organizations to create, expand, and improve programs that explicitly address racial trauma and promote healing and resiliency among Chicagoland youth of color. More than 500 young people ages 11-25 directly participated in healing programs and activities, with thousands more benefitting from the increased capacity and knowledge gained by our grantee partners.

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Below is a summary of Bright Promises current partnerships and some of our our grantee partner’s recent accomplishments. Bright Promises wishes to express our gratitude for all of our grantee partners. You are our reason for being, and it is an honor and privilege to be in partnership with you. We also wish to express our gratitude for our generous donors whose support fuels our mission. Thank you!

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2023-2024 Healing, Leading, Changing Community Partners

• Arab American Action Network (AAAN) - To engage more deeply in healing from racism-based trauma, AAAN is providing capacity-building training for their staff and youth leaders. With Bright Promises support, AAAN grew their team of youth who are knowledgeable about racism, racial profiling, and racism-based trauma. This expanded team of youth leaders then facilitated workshops, alongside AAAN staff, that engaged youth program participants in an exploration on how racism and racial profiling have affected their lives and the lives of their families and the community more broadly.  
  
  As a result of these workshops, the AAAN’s public-facing work is sharper and more clearly defines the roles of healing and racial-based trauma as they affect our community. AAAN is now in a position to lead the community in public discourse about understanding racism through a trauma-informed lens.
  
• A Long Walk Home - "Black girls are often erased from social movements, and it's time for people to see, hear, and believe us." Girl/Friends
   
  A recent report reveals, "Black girls are more likely to self-identify as leaders than any other ethnic group." This could not be more true for the youth leaders of A Long Walk Home. With Bright Promises support, A Long Walk Home is expanding The Girl/friends Leadership program. Through this program Black girls and gender non-conforming youth ages 12-18 throughout Chicagoland to participate in a two-year art intensive and social justice leadership program. ALWH works intergenerationally, through a Black feminist lens, to achieve gender and racial justice by centering the leadership of Black girls and gender-expansive young people of color on reshaping culture and policy through advocacy, youth-led programming, and shifting dominant narratives.  
  
• Alternatives - Community violence and exposure to trauma are causing a mental health crisis unlike any other among Black and Brown youth in Chicago. Bright Promises is partnering with Alternatives to enhance their Leadership Development Program by integrating principles of Restorative Justice and Trauma-Informed Care to support young people as they move along a continuum of healing, growing, and thriving.  
  
• Build Inc.- In 2022, Austin had the highest rate of homicides among the city’s 77 community areas, with 45 reported (Chicago Tribune). Most of the youth served by BUILD Inc. are from the Austin neighborhood, where many have witnessed or been victims of violence.  
  
  With Bright Promises support, BUILD’s Youth Leadership Council (YLC) is encouraging young people, ages 16-24, to find their voice and develop confidence in themselves as leaders, while giving them a platform to address issues that are important to them, their peers, and their communities. The overall goal of the program is to support youth leadership and civic engagement by developing young Chicagoans as local leaders by providing safe, meaningful work experiences, mentorship from caring adults, and high-quality out-of-school time programming - when youth are most at risk - that helps youth to heal from trauma and thrive.
  
• Chicago Freedom School - In the last year, Chicago Freedom School leveraged Bright Promises support to significantly expand training for their team of youth leaders - program alumni who co-lead programming with staff. While young people have always co-led programs, Chicago Freedom School realized that they needed deeper training in order to grow more fully into their leadership roles. Youth leaders participated in nearly 40 hours of in-depth training on CPR, First Aid, urban emergency first response preparedness, conflict de-escalation, and transformative justice.  
  
  Results from the Freedom Fellowship evaluation showed that 100% of participants believe it’s important to take a stand for social justice. Additionally, 85% strongly agree that they can solve problems in their schools by working together, as compared to 77% pre-program. These improved skills and confidence are foundational to young people feeling validated, empowered, and prepared to address racial injustice, which is a proven method for healing from racial trauma.  
  
• Gads Hill Center - With Bright Promises support, youth leaders from Gads Hill are producing and broadcasting podcasts focusing on racism and racial trauma, including discussing and researching topics; interviewing peers, family members, and community residents; writing scripts and recording and editing the podcasts; and broadcasting the podcasts to other students, family members, and community residents (and perhaps beyond thanks to the power of the internet!).Through this project, youth at Gads Hill Center are developing leadership and advocacy skills and the capacity to identify systems and policies that perpetuate racism and the solutions to create change.

• Girl’s Inc. Of Chicago - This year, Bright Promises supported the launch of Girls Inc. of Chicago citywide Ambassador program. The Ambassador program, which is open to all Chicago girls, welcomes girls of color who live in historically disinvested communities to select an advocacy topic of interest to them and implement a yearlong series of activities to advance the issue.  
  
  Ambassadors selected hair discrimination as the issue they wanted to address this school year. Throughout the year, girls learned more about the Crown Act and educated others on this topic. While Illinois has legislation that prohibits hair discrimination, there are no nationwide legal protections against hair discrimination. Many of Ambassadors wear their hair naturally and/or have locks or other protective hairstyles; helping educate others about the damaging effects of hair discrimination was a cathartic experience for them and made them feel validated.  
  
• Northwest Side Center - This past year, Bright Promises partnered with the Northwest Side Center to expand the Belmont Cragin Youth Leadership Council, more than doubling the size of the council from 7 to 18 youth. Youth leaders also met with adults in the community and discussed intergenerational trauma, including race-based trauma, and how it’s impacted them over the course of their lives from youth to older adults. During these discussions, youth learned about the race-based trauma that older adults in the community faced in the mid-20th century when they were youth, specifically around the Civil Rights Movement era and the racism in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s.  
  
  "This youth program keeps young people in the community occupied and active in their community," one parent shared. "My child’s academic performance has improved. It keeps them productive," another parent celebrated; "The program has helped them out a lot...it has lifted a lot of stress from their shoulders."
  
• Palenque LSNA - Bright Promises is partnering with Love, Unity, & Values Institute to bring healing from trauma brought about by violence and racism  through restorative justice practices and arts expression. With Bright Promises support, Love, Unity, & Values Institute has expanded their staff's capacity through restorative practice certification and advanced training in trauma-informed care. This past year, 8 youth ages 14-17 participated in the creation of the Freedom School Mural as expression of their journey healing from racial trauma.
  
• Project Vision - The Project Vision Scholars Program aims to better address race-based traumatic stress by intentionally recognizing and naming racially-based traumatic stress (RBTS) and integrating program components and activities that support healing and resiliency. With Bright Promises support, Project Vision is increasing awareness and developing training for its staff as well as designing and developing additional targeted programming for youth and families experiencing race-based trauma. This past year, more than 350 youth ages 11-19 participating in this program.

• R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative - Bright Promises is proud to support the R.E.A.L. Youth Initiative, a program which develops revolutionary consciousness and community among currently and formerly incarcerated youth to work towards the abolition of prisons and the conditions that produce them.

• UCAN - This year, Palenque LSNA leveraged Bright Promises support to launch an organizing fellowship and selected 5 youth to participate. Youth fellows attended organizing workshops and created initiatives to respond to problems they identified in the community. From this work, Appreciation Fridays at partner school, Schurz High School, was created.  
  
  Staff at Palenque LSNA shared, "As a response to gun violence students experienced at school in which 3 students were harmed, we chose to show up as a community and show love to the students of Schurz. From there, parents and students decided that in order to increase the feeling of safety, we should keep doing Appreciation Fridays once a month.  At Schurz High School, we created a community Friday curriculum for a class of immigrant and ESL students. We worked with them on Fridays and taught them about their community and what their rights were and how they can be changemakers in their community. To culminate their community Fridays, they conducted a survey in their own internal circles about what their community needs are. They assessed the data and had conversations about how they can make a difference beyond their classroom. Many of the students in that class joined other ongoing programs we have in the organization and also went to Springfield to lobby for immigrant and workers’ rights."

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Cover image provided by Gads Hill Center