A four-part Strength & Service Series virtual workshop.
You are invited: Join us for a new four-part series hosted through the Faith, Families and Community Partnerships Initiative — a collaboration between Lutheran Services in America and ELCA World Hunger. Built on the seminal work of scholar and practitioner Dr. Shawn Ginwright, our expert facilitators, Dr. Denicia Carlay and Shannon Scott, will guide us through the practice of healing-centered engagement. The workshop series is designed to support the application of the practice through the four dimensions or “pivots” necessary in our work to improve outcomes for children, youth, families and communities.
Who Should Attend and Why?
This workshop series is designed to support staff at any level of leadership in applying healing-centered engagement in their work. In the words of Dr. Ginwright, it takes practitioners beyond trauma-informed care responses to a “more holistic approach to fostering well-being.” Additionally, it recognizes the ways in which “trauma and healing are experienced collectively” to support improved well-being for families and communities.
Series Overview
Each workshop will address one of the “Four Pivots” and will include interactive activities that strengthen the ability to apply the practice in our respective work and efforts, through a safe and collegial peer-to-peer environment. The workshops will also include group reflection, along with the engagement of outside experts and perspectives. The Four Pivots include:
- Pivot 1—Presence: Cultivating mindfulness and intentionality in your actions and interactions.
- Pivot 2—Awareness: Fostering self-awareness and reflection to better understand yourself and others.
- Pivot 3—Vision: Embracing possibility, unleashing creativity, and innovation.
- Pivot 4—Connection: Moving to transformative relationships that foster growth and empowerment.
Register Today!
Register today for each workshop session and join peers on this journey to understanding and applying healing-centered engagement!
Session #1: Presence
Held on Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Session #2: Awareness (feat. the National Indian Child Welfare Association)
Held on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 (recording available below)
Most non-American Indian / Alaska Native people educated in the United States are not familiar with the overt government policy goals and practices that formed the basis of the hundreds of years of forced assimilation of Native peoples, including systemic, widespread removal of Native children from their families and communities. Corporations and the nonprofit sector were also contributors to and active participants in colonization and the implementation of federal Indian policy.
Learning about the strategic intent and milestones of these policies and their impacts on Native children, their families, and tribal nations is an important step towards understanding the structural change necessary to truly embrace tribal sovereignty, honor tribal self-determination, and support community healing. Beyond employing this structural analysis lens, “mirror work” will also allow us to “get underneath the hood” as Dr. Shawn Ginwright says, “and explore our motivations, fears, dreams, and insecurities with a sense of curiosity.”
Session #3: Vision (feat. the Frameworks Institute)
Held on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 (recording available below)
Advancing equity for children, youth and families requires making key shifts in how we think, talk and mobilize partners. Topics like health and housing, education, and poverty—which have long been viewed through the narrow lens of personal achievement or failing—must be reframed as shared responsibilities and accompanied by calls for collective action grounded in our shared Lutheran values.
The FrameWorks Institute is a non-profit research organization that uses social science to develop framing strategies that mission-driven organizations and communities can use to productively shift public discourse and build public will for social change.
Join this webinar to explore some of the communications challenges that social change advocates are up against, as well as evidence-based framing strategies we can all use to change narratives and advance polices, practices and system changes that strengthen health and opportunity for children, youth and families.
Note: Participants will have multiple opportunities to write, reflect, discuss and provide input into a forthcoming Framing Guide. As with all sessions in this Advancing Equity series, participants are encouraged to bring their own lived experience to the dialogue.
Session #4: Connection – The Essential Role of Housing Stability for Strong Families
1:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET, Wednesday, December 11, 2024
In this pivotal fourth session of our series, we will delve into the profound relationship between housing stability and family well-being. Recognizing that safe, secure housing is foundational for fostering strong families, this workshop on the Essential Role of Housing Stability for Strong Families, will examine how power dynamics and policy decisions impact housing accessibility and stability within our communities.
We will explore the ways in which lived experiences inform our understanding of equity and community healing, challenging us to rethink our approaches to leadership and support.
This session aligns with the “Connection” pivot of Dr. Shawn Ginwright’s healing-centered engagement framework. We will focus on building transformative relationships that empower families, foster community resilience, and create pathways to sustainable housing solutions.
Resources
- Presentation slides
- Position paper: The Intersection of Housing Insecurity & Child Welfare Involvement
Workshop Series Facilitators
Dr. Denicia Carlay currently serves as co-founder and co-CEO of Village is Possible. Denicia is a community healer, complex trauma survivor, scholar, practitioner, and village keeper. Denicia roots her practice in love and restoration of inner light. She specializes in embodied, healing centered engagement with children, youth, and families. Denicia has served foster care and juvenile justice impacted youth in various capacities as a social worker, consultant, clinician, and facilitator in the field of child welfare for 16 years. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership in social justice, licensure in clinical social work, and pupil personnel services credential, but with all these degrees and things Denicia just hopes to someday be the “hood mama” for her entire village and anyone in need of community.
Shannon Scott is the founder of Our Lived Experience (OLE) and J8 Consulting. Her experience includes both U.S.-based and international not-for-profits. Shannon began her career in education as a teacher with Teach For America and continued her work in education reform in the Teach For All network. She was the founding Leadership Development Officer at Teach For Malaysia and launched the first leadership development continuum for Teach For America’s work in the Mississippi Delta. For the last six years, she’s run a national leadership development fellowship in child welfare, working in 15 different states, DC, and Puerto Rico. Shannon deeply values adult learning and leadership development.
