Tag Archives: Trauma

Supporting youth through challenging times just got easier. Digital stand-alone sessions of All Together Rising are now available. Target the immediate needs of your Circle by purchasing a single facilitator-guided session on the specific forms of adversity your group members may be experiencing: Community Violence, Loss/Grief, Housing Insecurity ...

All Together Rising is One Circle Foundation’s answer to the call from youth service providers for Circle sessions that directly address some of the familiar adverse conditions affecting many youth. All Together Rising is an innovative collection of supplemental Circle sessions, compatible with any One Circle model (Girls Circle, Unity Circle, or The Council for Boys and Young Men), which has been meticulously developed to address the complexities of eight different adverse childhood experiences: community violence, food insecurity, homelessness & housing insecurity ...

16 years ago I was intimidated, excited, nervous, and honored to be given the opportunity to facilitate my first Girls Circle with eight 16-17-year-old girls, all of whom were on probation. They were required to attend as a condition of their probation and we met in a classroom on their high school campus right after school each Wednesday. Going into that first session, I did all of the extra things that I could think of ...

Brothers as Allies, a curriculum from The Council for Boys and Young Men, is a program that changed my life forever. Four years ago I was struggling to find my identity. Hungry for a chance to have real interactions with youth. To truly be in the field and help. Help every student I encounter get at least .01% closer to their dreams. Some may see a small percentage, but the trajectory that shifts from the curricula provided by One Circle Foundation literally saves lives. It saved mine. ...

I’ve come full circle with One Circle Foundation. When I look back on my family heritage and upbringing, I marvel at the events, large and small, that have led me to be where I am today: at the helm of such an incredible organization. I am the proud granddaughter of Asian American ancestry. A tragic yet beautiful love story, my paternal grandparents met and fell in love in the Japanese internment camps. They adopted my father from Japan from a low-income single mother who couldn’t afford to keep all three of her children. My mother came from Korea as an exchange student and used to sell handmade jewelry at the flea market. My parents met and first flirted at a donut shop where my mother worked, which may be responsible for my life-long love affair with donuts. I grew up seeing my parents work double shifts, night shifts, and overtime to raise me and my two siblings. I’m proud and forever grateful for my parents for all they sacrificed and invested in us. I was honored to be able to see their journey from recent immigrants to professionals as a pharmacist and nurse ...

All of us - of all genders, ages, and cultures - have a role to play in solving this crisis. Underneath the abject horrors of school shootings, below the grasp of automatic rifles and magazine cartridges, exists a teenager, angry, overwhelmed, who’s endured childhood abuse, domestic violence, and severe bullying at school. According to data trackers, the adolescent is, on average, 16 years old.New York Times columnist David Brooks notes this teen is in crisis, isolated, bitter, at a breaking point, and craving revenge, power, and notoriety. And, he is male.  98% of mass shooters are male, as reported in The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, 2021, by researchers Jillian Peterson and James Densley. We know this. But do we ask, “Why?”  As gender violence prevention educator and activist, Jackson Katz, asks, why does the media avoid saying so, most often using gender-neutral terms like shooter, perpetrator, or intruder for an action that is patently not gender-neutral? While access to assault weapons must urgently be addressed, it’s also imperative that we dig deeper to uproot a rotted source of male violence deeply embedded in our social ...

One Circle Foundation aims to provide services and resources to support facilitators of youth service programs. We meet the needs of our community where it’s at.  Unfortunately, our community is dealing with too much all at once. We are met with violence, systemic racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ablism, housing insecurity, a climate crisis, mass shootings, war, a worldwide pandemic, and a severe mental health crisis. These large-scale traumas are on top of any personal challenges that individuals may be going through.  These topics can be hard to discuss with the youth and communities that we all work with, but it’s essential that we open the door for discussion to process these issues in a safe and supportive environment. Here is a list of resources for navigating through these topics with the youth and communities that you serve.  ...