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By Ann Carrns, The New York Times, April 5, 2021 Two dozen state legislatures are considering bills on financial literacy education, an unusually high number, proponents say. They attribute the interest to concern about the burden of student debt, as well as heightened awareness about income and economic inequality as a result of the pandemic. “There’s a recognition that folks are being left behind,” said Tim Ranzetta, founder of Next Gen Personal Finance, a nonprofit group that creates free...

By James Redford, Seattle International Film Festival, April 6, 2021 Opens April 8, 2021 James Redford’s final film is an illuminating rendering of author Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club”) through her own family photo albums and video footage, linking her prolific and groundbreaking work with the generations of women and immigrants before her. [ Please click here for more information .]

By Jeremy Loudenback, The Imprint, February 16, 2021 In a historic move, the Los Angeles Unified School District board voted Tuesday to transform its school police force, eliminating more than 100 positions and stationing the remaining officers off campus. In their place, new “school climate coaches” will de-escalate tense situations at the district’s 1,000 K-12 schools, part of a new $36.5 million investment in Black students and their academic success. The vote in the nation’s second...

By Marjy Stagmeier, Good News Network, April 4, 2021 When Marjy Stagmeier was 11 years old, she was the Monopoly champion of her 6th grade class in Atlanta Georgia—and she knew right then that she wanted to be landlord when she grew up—and what a compassionate landlord she became. After graduating from Georgia State University, she started investing in old affordable apartment communities and quickly realized that many of her renter families were low-income single parents who needed services...

By Melissa Gomez, Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2021 After waging a campaign for more than seven years, young activists celebrated a victory on Thursday when Los Angeles officials announced they would set aside $1.1 million for the creation of a centralized resource center for youth. On the City Hall steps, Council Member Monica Rodriguez, who has been pushing for the formation of a youth-centric department since 2018, and Mayor Eric Garcetti told dozens of young activists the funding would be...

Kindness does not equate to being ‘trauma-informed’. And being trauma-informed sadly does not always equate to being ‘survivor-informed’.

Being an Indian woman one might assume I have always been into Goddess-y things, but that would not be a true assumption. On the contrary, I've lived most of my life feeling quite disconnected, and to be totally honest, and accurate – "amputated" – from my feminine self. The truth is that I adopted a core belief to cope and survive. For decades I believed that that "all" my trauma, troubles, and tribulations, came from one singular fact, that I was born a girl, destined for a life of...

Join us for our first episode in a new series called "PACEs Connection Reacts" where we will be viewing the world through a PACEs science and trauma-informed lens. For this PACEs Connection Reacts, join Ingrid Cockhren, Director of the Cooperative of Communities, Natalie Audage, Family and Community Resources Lead, and Alison Cebulla, Community Facilitator at PACEs Connection. Dr. Christina Bethell, speaker at the HOPE Summit, PCEs expert and researcher at Johns Hopkins University, will be...

Rick Griffin knows a lot about hope – how to understand it, instill it, develop it. Griffin is the director of training and curriculum development for the non-profit Community Resilience Initiative (CRI) in Walla Walla, Washington. Walla Walla’s Lincoln High was the subject of a 2015 film, “Paper Tigers,” by the late Jamie Redford, about how the school principal, Jim Sporleder, adopted an ACEs-informed approach that positively transformed the school as well as the surrounding community.

Natalie Audage, new PACEs family and community resources lead, says her middle and high school education in dictatorships – Aleppo, Syria and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – where her parents were teachers on the international circuit, made her realize that human rights were not universal. That’s why a light bulb went off in her senior year at Princeton University, when the chemistry major took a class on human rights. She realized she could combine her love of science with her desire to help the...

Alexis, 17, has always been close to her parents. But since the pandemic began, they have been arguing a lot. “We snap at each other more,” she said. “And because there’s more negative emotion with the virus and we’re all trapped in the house together, the stress is definitely amplified.” Both her parents have been working from their Maryland home since March last year. For most of that time, Alexis’ sister, who has graduated from college, has also been living at home. Last April, their...

Seven years ago, trying to recover from the death of her daughter, Brenda Mosley was introduced to the concept of trauma-informed care. “I was in a state of grief, darkness and despair,” she says. Then she began a three-year, trauma-informed program offered by an organization in her neighborhood of Kensington, Philadelphia, the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC). “It was 10 women and we were introduced to all the models of trauma-informed care,” Mosley recalls. “I was...