Trauma Screening, Awareness, Relief through "START"
Posted November 14, 2017
START(ing) to catch on!
START participants’ trauma symptoms decreased across the board
With inspiring results coming in every day (see chart which records decreases in frequency of symptoms), with more and more young people finding relief from their trauma using START (Screening and Tool for Awareness and Relief of Trauma), we’ve begun training other organizations to use our homegrown tool to identify trauma symptoms and give young sufferers temporary relief.
We’re happy to release our latest annual report, Prevention, Intervention & Healing, full of program results, pics of our clients, staff and friends and descriptions of the life-saving work we do, with your help.
In light of recent events in Charlottesville, to be silent is to be complicit. Speaking with one voice, we at Youth ALIVE! passionately denounce white supremacists and the national “leaders” who openly or tacitly encourage them. We also acknowledge shameful acts in our own back yard – from microaggressions to racist taunts and assaults, hate crimes and ICE raids – by people emboldened by seeing hate go unchecked.
TNT youth leaders and staff with OPD representatives at the forum.
This year Teens on Target is leading an effort to open up the lines of communication between the Oakland Police Department and Oakland youth, especially young people of color. Officers have attended Teens on Target meetings for intimate dialogues, and just before the end of the school year, TNT hosted a big public forum on Police/community relations at Castlemont attended by over 200 students, staff and faculty. The forum featured a panel of OPD officers and TNT youth leaders for a wide-ranging 90-minute discussion that at times was tense but in the end served as a promising kickoff of an ongoing TNT project to increase police transparency and to lift the veil that impedes mutual understanding between the community and the police. OPD representatives on the panel included longtime OPD veterans, Captains LeRonne Armstrong and Ersie Joyner, Sgt. Gordon Dorham and Officer Robert Smith. The panel took questions from the audience about what their training procedures are for dealing with youth of color, what to do if you feel you have been mistreated by the police, and what it’s like to be an African American police officer in Oakland. Next steps in the TNT’s work to address the climate of relations between the police and civilians of color in Oakland will be to help the Mayor’s public safety director as she puts together an OPD Youth Leadership Council to review policy recommendations, provide training to officers on how to deal with young people, advise on hiring, and offer their own policy recommendations.
In late June at Bocanova Restaurant in Oakland, 175 of our closest friends joined us to celebrate Youth ALIVE!’s 25 years of violence prevention, intervention and healing. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called Youth ALIVE! “Oakland’s homegrown leader in the struggle to end violence.” She addressed the gathering and spoke about the effect of our work. “Youth ALIVE! saves lives," she said.
Miracle and Mom Sandra Campbell at YA! celebration
TNT Youth Leader, and new Castlemont High School graduate, Miracle Robinson gave a great speech at Youth ALIVE!’s 25th anniversary dinner celebration at Bocanova in June. She even brought her mom, Sandra Campbell, up to be by her side while she told us about growing up in East Oakland, about how her mom taught her right from wrong, and how much TNT and Youth ALIVE! have meant to her. We will miss Miracle!
What: Youth ALIVE! is 25 Celebration Dinner When: Thursday, June 22, 2017, 5:30 to 9:00 Where: Bocanova Restaurant, 55 Webster Street, Jack London Square, Oakland
The young leaders in our Teens on Target program had wanted to do a toy drive for a long time. They thought about it at Christmas time, but figured there were plenty of toy drives going on then. So, they waited until the spring to do theirs.
