Shaping the Future with Culturally Specific Innovations:
This dynamic virtual roundtable will highlight the need to lift up the pre-pandemic innovations being made by culturally specific organizations in reaching and supporting survivors from communities of color. Participants will be provided with culturally specific responses that extend beyond leaving, going to shelter, and calling the police. Participants will also hear what survivors and advocates of color are seeing, hearing, and feeling in their communities. Join us for this virtual roundtable to share what is happening in your community as we envision the way forward for victims of crime from communities of color. Moderated by Zoe Flowers, featuring panelists Purvi Shah and Maria del Rosario Franco-Rahman.
Panelists:
Purvi Shah
Purvi Shah is a writer and social justice advocate. While serving as the Executive Director of Sakhi for South Asian Women, she won the inaugural SONY South Asian Excellence Award for Social Service. In 2017, through a participatory change process, she authored a year-long study, Seeding Generations, which spurred New York City community-based interventions for people who cause harm and abuse. She is also the author of two books of poetry, Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), and Miracle Marks (Northwestern University Press, 2019). During the 10th anniversary of 9/11, she directed Together We Are New York, a community-based poetry project to highlight Asian American voices. Her favorite art practices are her sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice. Discover more @PurviPoets.
Maria del Rosario Franco Rahman
Maria del Rosario Franco-Rahman, RYT 200, is sustained by visions of a loving, harmonious world where healing and liberation resound and we all thrive. She is the founder and CEO of Con Todo Corazon where she works locally and nationally offering heart-centered holistic healing services designed to support personal and social transformation. Her work centers the healing and liberation of women of color survivors, advocates, activists and service providers and our fellow communities on the margins. Maria’s healing work includes yoga and Dance from the Heart, an intuitive form of healing body movement. She is a student of cross-cultural healing methods including shamanic apprenticeship. Her fifteen years of service to survivors of gender based violence includes direct service to undocumented domestic violence survivors in her role as the Residential Program Manager at a Latinx culturally-specific transitional shelter, offering holistic healing retreats to survivors and service providers as well as co-authoring “A Holistic Healing Model for Counselors, Advocates and Lawyers Serving Trauma Survivors: Joyful Heart Foundation Retreat” published in Traumatology, 2017 and currently serves as a consultant for Women of Color Network and Women Empiwerment Teaching Artist with Critical Mass Dance Company. Maria is a Xicana moving through this world honoring her ancestors and the coming generations con todo corazon.
Annika Leonard
Wherever she goes Annika Leonard feels called to create spaces where deep healing can occur, particularly in the lives of Black women, femmes, girls & youth. On a national level, Annika has participated in the ACE-DV Leadership Forum of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and has been consulted with the National Resource Center on Sexual Violence under several projects including the 2018SART protocol and the Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative project. Annika has served as the Chair of the Milwaukee Commission on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault where her organization, Priceless Incite LLC., operates as a sexual assault service provider in the city of Milwaukee. Annika has a Bachelor of Science in Human Services and a Master of Business Administration from Cardinal Stritch University. Her continued studies and 15+ years of experience honoring and holding space for people most impacted by violence allow her to present offerings in the form of workshops, keynotes, and guiding us to be in alignment with our truth through her organization Priceless Incite. Annika has developed a unique culturally specific curriculum for Blackyouth that cultivate their self-awareness, leadership,and wellness to bring about deep, radical, and cultural solutions to ending violence.
Moderator:
Zoë Flowers
Zoë Flowers is author, content creator and writer with the Huffington Post. Her poetry and essays can be found in Stand Our Ground; Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander, Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Assault and the new anthology, Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse. Her articles and interviews can be found on The Grio, Bloom Magazine, and several online journals.
In 2004, Zoë interviewed women about their experiences with domestic and sexual violence. From Ashes to Angel’s Dust: A Journey Through Womanhood is the book that emerged. ASHES – is a play that breathes life into the original stories chronicled in Zoë’s book and includes new stories about the media, campus sexual assault, body image, and the journey to self-love. ASHES has had many successful performances including; Yale University’s Fearless Conference, The White House’s United State of Women Summit in
2016, National Coalition against Domestic Violence’s National Conference, Smith College and Brown University in 2018.
For the past twenty years, Zoë’s worked at several state domestic violence coalitions and spent the last 8 years at the Women of Color Network where she started as a consultant and transitioned to the Director of Survivor Programs. Zoë also served as a holistic healer at the Joyful Heart Foundation (JHF) which was founded in 2004 by Mariska Hargitay (aka Det. Olivia Benson on Law and Order SVU).
In 2012, Zoë left JHF to launch Soul Requirements, Inc. a healing centered consulting company that combines her artistic endeavors, domestic violence expertise and holistic healing practices. Since then, she’s facilitated individual and group healing sessions, retreats, and workshops from New York to Ecuador. She returned to JHF as a consultant to run the trauma center the organization shepherded after the Newtown school shootings. Months later she joined the organization’s retreat team. The organization’s retreat model and healing techniques conducted by Zoë and hercolleagues were evaluated by Georgetown University and can be found in Traumatology, 23(2), 143–152.
Zoë has appeared on National Public Radio, was the keynote speaker for The Florida Coalition Against Sexual Violence statewide conference, The New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and The Maryland Women of Color Network’s Conference.
In 2019, she presented a workshop entitled, “Utilizing Performance as an Intersectional Response to Violence Against Women in Fez, Morocco and conducted listening sessions in London, UK and Edmonton, CA. She was also the keynote speaker at SUNY Adirondack’s We. Say. No Conference, Delaware’s Victim Service Conference, and returned as keynote for The New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Prevention Summit.
In 2020, she’ll be speaking in front of 4 classes at the University of Florida and will speak and teach 1 class at Skidmore College. This fall, she will be keynote speaker at the National Latin@ Institute in New Orleans, LA, the Victim Justice Symposium on October 5, 2020 in Des Moines Iowa, and for the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic Violence on October 7, 2020.
Registration is closed.
Please check the The Way Forward: Emerging Strategies for Crime Victims of Color #1 resource page for the recording.
As states begin to lift stay-at-home orders, service providers are working to determine the best path for their service users and organizations within the context of the ongoing public health crisis. Their path to reopening largely depends on the population they serve; with overall safety concerns impacting when, how, and to what extent they can reopen. During this interactive strategy session, a variety of providers who serve victims from diverse populations across the lifespan, will lead a panel discussion on the unique measures organizations may adopt as they prepare to reopen. Participants will be invited to share their current plans for reopening (or staying closed). Please join us as we continue to strategize together on sustaining services for all victims.
Registration is closed.
Please check back for the recording.
This learning community is comprised of advocates, service providers, and directly-impacted people working at the intersection of reentry, victimization, and healing. We meet virtually every few weeks to offer and receive support and to share strategies for sustaining our programs in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Please email Kaitlin Kall at kkall@vera.org if you are interested in participating.
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people are at high risk for contracting COVID-19 and often have little or no access to reliable and consistent health care services. The health risks—coupled with the challenge of practicing social distancing in jails and prisons—have led correctional facilities around the country, particularly local jails, to accelerate releases. In many cases, however, people are returning home to the challenging, new reality of life during a global pandemic with very little access to the supportive services they might normally get during their reentry period (e.g., assistance with housing, employment, and transportation). Accessing healing services—often difficult under normal circumstances—appears to be even more challenging, as most providers have shifted to remote service provision, and not all survivors have access to reliable technology to avail themselves of remote services.
Join us for a panel discussion about the emerging and enduring needs of formerly incarcerated survivors and learn how some service providers are adapting their services to meet those needs. Panelists include Leon EL-Alamin from the M.A.D.E. Institute in Flint, Michigan; Angel Tomeo Sam from The Bail Project in Spokane, Washington; and Colleen Smith from Newark Community Solutions in New Jersey.
Registration is closed.
Please check the Adapting and Sustaining Services for Formerly Incarcerated Survivors During COVID-19: A Panel Discussion resource page for the recording.
This unprecedented health crisis is challenging for most of us. For people who have experienced trauma it can be even more so. The isolation of the statewide Safer-at-Home orders and the unpredictability of the coronavirus can trigger flashbacks and panic attacks. The fear of contracting Covid-19 can create high anxiety making it hard for survivors to cope. The uncertainty and potential chaos of hospital responses may make it difficult for survivors to seek care if they need it. In this hour-long virtual discussion we will explore what you can do to help and offer a few resources.
Esta crisis sanitaria sin precedentes es un desafío para la mayoría de nosotros. Para las personas que han experimentado un trauma puede ser aún más difícil. Las órdenes estatales de aislamiento (Safer-at-Home) y la imprevisibilidad del coronavirus pueden desencadenar flashbacks y ataques de pánico. El miedo a contraer COVID-19 puede crear una gran ansiedad que dificulte a los sobrevivientes sobrellevar la pandemia. La incertidumbre y el caos potencial de las respuestas de los hospitales pueden dificultar la búsqueda de atención médica de los sobrevivientes si la necesitaran. En esta discusión virtual de una hora de duración, exploraremos qué puede hacer usted para ayudar y ofreceremos algunos recursos.
Registration is closed. Please check back for the recording.
People with disabilities and Deaf people are victims of violent crime at three times the rate of people without disabilities. They also experience some of the greatest obstacles to accessing justice and healing services. These barriers make it difficult, if not impossible, to fully participate in the legal system or heal from the trauma they’ve experienced. An important way to increase access to justice, safety, and healing opportunities is by providing people with accommodations.
Registration is closed.
Please check the Just Ask: How Advocates, Law Enforcement, and Attorneys can better meet the needs of crime victims with disabilities by asking about and providing accommodations resource page for the recording.
This learning community is comprised of advocates, service providers, and directly-impacted people working at the intersection of reentry, victimization, and healing. We meet virtually every two weeks to offer and receive support and to share strategies for sustaining our programs in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Please email Kaitlin Kall at kkall@vera.org if you are interested in participating.
Are you feeling increased levels of stress and anxiety? If you answered yes, know you are not alone. Join us for a virtual wellness session to help manage your stress, as you navigate the many challenges involved in continuing services for survivors during the COVID-19 crisis.
People across the country are mobilizing quickly to ensure services for survivors of crime continue during the COVID-19 crisis. Confronting this new set of challenges in rapidly changing and uncertain times can be stressful. It is critical that we in the crime victims field integrate strategies to manage stress and anxiety into our day-to-day practice. In this virtual wellness session, we are joined by Zoe Flowers – advocate, healer, writer, poet, and filmmaker. Zoe will guide us through a number of activities to help us stay grounded and manage stress and anxiety.
Registration is closed. Please check back for the recording.
Are you feeling increased levels of stress and anxiety? If you answered yes, know you are not alone. Join us for a virtual wellness session to help manage your stress, as you navigate the many challenges involved in continuing services for survivors during the COVID-19 crisis.
People across the country are mobilizing quickly to ensure services for survivors of crime continue during the COVID-19 crisis. Confronting this new set of challenges in rapidly changing and uncertain times can be stressful. It is critical that we in the crime victims field integrate strategies to manage stress and anxiety into our day-to-day practice. In this virtual wellness session, we are joined by Zoe Flowers – advocate, healer, writer, poet, and filmmaker. Zoe will guide us through a number of activities to help us stay grounded and manage stress and anxiety.
Registration is closed. Please check back for the recording.
Are you feeling increased levels of stress and anxiety? If you answered yes, know you are not alone. Join us for a virtual wellness session to help manage your stress, as you navigate the many challenges involved in continuing services for survivors during the COVID-19 crisis.
People across the country are mobilizing quickly to ensure services for survivors of crime continue during the COVID-19 crisis. Confronting this new set of challenges in rapidly changing and uncertain times can be stressful. It is critical that we in the crime victims field integrate strategies to manage stress and anxiety into our day-to-day practice. In this virtual wellness session, we are joined by Zoe Flowers – advocate, healer, writer, poet, and filmmaker. Zoe will guide us through a number of activities to help us stay grounded and manage stress and anxiety.
This session is full. Please check back for the recording.