 Welcome to the McLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and the University of Chicago Trauma Center. We are co-hosting this ethics series entitled Ethical Issues in Violence, Trauma, and Trauma Surgery, and we really appreciate all of your due diligence on a Wednesday afternoon to come out today. It is my pleasure to introduce today's speaker who is known to some of you, Pastor Chris Harris, who since 1999 has served as the pastor of Bright Star Church of God in Christ here in Bronzeville. Pastor Harris entered the ministry after studying at Olive Harvey College and is a distinguished community leader, and has established several important organizations, some of which you'll hear of today, most notably the Turn Center, which stands for the Urban Resilience Network. The term program has established partnerships with institutions throughout the city of Chicago, including the University of Chicago, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the United Way of Metropolitan of Chicago, and the Jewish United Fund. Recognizing the need for community-minded clergy and community outreach, Pastor Harris also initiated the progress around the school's program to address increased balance in Chicago schools, and in addition he's founded the nonprofit organization, Bright Star Community Outreach, which develops program for educational enrichment and youth violence prevention. This organization has over 300 employees and annual current operating budget of three million dollars. Pastor Harris is also the chairman of the Chicago Public Schools Bronzeville Community Action Council. His mission is to improve Chicago schools and is also a member of our very own University of Chicago Medicine Community Advisory Council, which you served on for the past year. I've actually grown to count Pastor Harris as a friend, although as he may know I never call him his first name. I always call him Pastor Harris because that's kind of the way I grew up. But Pastor Harris is indeed a friend to all of us and a friend to the communities in South-South Chicago where he lives, he preaches, he prays, and he plays. And everyone can give a catchy anecdote, but I think the probably the most important thing that I can say about Pastor Harris is that he's a friend. He's a friend to everyone who meets him, and I hope you will see his infectious energy and the joy that he brings to life and the joy he brings to helping the lives of his brothers. So Pastor Harris is going to give a talk entitled, The Urban Viziliance Network Turn to Fate Leaders in the Fate Community to Address Violence and Trauma. Pastor Harris. So thank you Dr. Rogers and to all of you all, to the leadership and to all of our friends and colleagues that are here today. It's an honor and certainly a privilege to be with you all today. First of all let me just share with you all one of the reasons that I'm really excited to be here is because I trust in the leadership of Dr. Selwyn Rogers and when he came along to be a part of this effort to lead this trauma center that the University of Chicago is heading up and pushing forward. It was really exciting and enjoyable to have a real conversation with an individual who gets it and that's what made me really excited to be able to partner with him. So I also consider him to be a friend and his tremendous colleague who has informed me and inspired me already. So I'm really really happy to be here with you and to be able to also be in a room with so many colleagues and friends that I have here today who have had the privilege to do this tremendous work with. Pastor Chris Harris is what they call me in Bronzeville but I am a son of the soil of the Bronzeville community. Born and raised right there in Bronzeville it's where I have worshiped and worked for now 43 years. It's been an exciting time. I took over the Church Bright Star, Church of God in Christ, located 735 East 44th Street in Bronzeville and had the wonderful privilege of being the successor of Dr. James Stovall. Now the reason I do the work that I do and the reason I'm both congregational and community focused is because we're not for that preacher that pastor Dr. James Stovall and that church that I now pastor Bright Star, Church of God in Christ then I too would have ended up being a victim of what I like to call that cradle to prison or cradle to grave pipeline and it was because of a preacher in the church I happen to now be the preacher at that church that my life was saved not just spiritually but also naturally and that's been really the joy of my life. I travel the world singing gospel and jazz I won't do much of that today because it's not my assignment and I'm pretty hoarse but I've traveled the world 20 something different countries 20 something different world tours singing gospel and jazz and what excites me is the fact that that work in singing the gospel and now preaching the gospel is the very thing that expanded my point of reference it allowed me to get a global view of what the world was like as a matter of fact it is also something that inspires the work that I do along with so many other colleagues like Pastor Mike Neal who is here today with us one of the things you have to think about is word not for those tours and those trips I like many other young people in the Bronzeville community and other urban communities would not have this expanded point of reference because say what you want to say about this violence and this trauma I believe the reason we see so much of it right now is because many of our youth lack point of reference and opportunity and so I was blessed let me use the word privilege to be able to go outside my community and the Bronzeville community that sits right in this backyard of this place where we stand today many of the children that are raised up in Bronzeville downtown is like Paris to them they only get to see the skyscrapers they only get to look up the road and say I would love to go there but many of them very seldom get a chance to go there and so that's the impetus for why we are here today bright star community outreach and I'll shoot a bright star church was founded about nine years ago and when we think about what has happened between the time that we started this work and developing programming that serves both the third and the fourth war we started to think how do we do work or ministry outside the box now here's something I want you to think about this all started with this program when Darian Albert how many of you all heard of Darian Albert now I'm a preacher and you got to talk back to me every now and then so feel free to just talk back to me and just let me know that you're still alive or woke or you hear me one of the other what you amen that's what I'm looking for Darian Albert was murdered unfortunately finger high school two by four over the head now another black kid did and so they started to kind of rally and wonder what would we do and so I started a program called prayer around the school patch program where we put prayer around the school the first Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. based on that old school Jesus model he asked his disciples what could not you watch with me for one hour while he was in one of the most traumatic places of his life the Garden of Gethsemane so this idea comes to me let me say it like I want to say it from the Lord and said put prayer in the community and wrap it around the school since they took prayer out of the school so we've been doing patch program prayer around the school now for 10 years it's been an exciting time first Saturday of every month 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. it doesn't matter if it's freezing cold really really hot raining we're out there on a constant basis and so one day we were doing prayer around the school and we were going from one school Woodson to another school and this grandmother heard us out there singing this song somebody prayed for me had me on their mind took the time to pray for me this grandmother snatched her grandson and said you coming out here and these church folk are going to pray for you and we did that we prayed for him but what was amazing to us is the grandmother after we prayed she said now Reverend thank you for your prayers but my family needs far more than just prayer where are your programs I didn't have an answer hence bright star community outreach was burnt we started to do all kinds of programs and I'm I'm gonna just share with you some of the programs that we've been able to do such as safe passage where we take about 51 folks adults who are a presence of safety and security for these children as they cross gang territories yes it provides employment for those adults but just think about it why would we need adults on the streets to make sure kids are safe think about the quality of life and if you don't have to live this and you don't have to experience this I want you to think twice as much as the folks who have to live it every single day it's not a pleasant experience but provides employment it also creates questions to the children why are they out here some of the other programs you provide after school program and that's nothing new but we don't want ours to be a babysitting center we want to make sure that the folks that are in the building helping with this work is able to move the needle on scholastic achievement then we also have a program that I really love called the team initiative truancy education and mentoring just to highlight a few of these programs and the team initiative allows us to make sure that there's programming available for students who are suspended or expelled we don't want them at home chilling we don't want them on the streets hanging out we don't want them playing the xbox some of us in here we would call that a tarry 2600 and if you laugh you just told your age we don't want them playing with electronics but we want them to come to us for conflict resolution we want them to come to us for peaceful solutions and making sure that we provide mentoring for these kids and that's been really exciting and so all of these programs including the family advocacy center do dcfs will be going to the home and increase the protective factors as we decrease these interesting thing called safety fact what is that did we even talk about what protective factors are did we have conversations about that as a church no we didn't but because of the partnerships that we now have we talk about factors we talk about prevention we talk about intervention through the programs that we provide and when you look at how we do that one of the things we're most excited about is our explosive group we've taken this organization from three people to now more than 300 folks employed the sco has created an awesome out of school program centered around academics creative arts and technology we're the circle as pastor here it says he wants it to be a 360 circle around these students resources being available to them and so we're part of that circle to make sure that they have better outcomes we are looked at as an advocate and the student relates to us in a way because we don't come in we're the giant but we are champions for change and so we want them to understand that it is important to be a model citizen to be one that has dignity respect and integrity in all areas that they may carry out in life one of the reasons why we as black men support bsco is because we believe that the vision is to build our community we're able to give our kids the things that they need to be able to be successful adults it is a huge privilege and pleasure to be a part of an organization who understands that we need to be the change we need to get into the community we need to provide the resources that are necessary to have our students succeed what is really important about the work of bright star community outreach is that they're leading the effort to build a comprehensive and coordinated violence prevention strategy in the community of bronzeville and they're doing that by bringing evidence-based programs into the community but also by using research to evaluate the programs that already exist in the community to test whether or not those programs really have the impact that we think they have bsco continues to work with the community to identify assets and ways to build upon them additionally we are working to enhance our holistic programming designed to address the many needs of the community and partnering with other organizations that serve in ways that we do not the greater bronzeville neighborhood network is an initiative supported by the united way of metropolitan chicago we have nearly 20 greater bronzeville neighborhood network stakeholders interested in advancing workforce in bronzeville as the lead organization bright star is excited to be the convener and not the competitor team program at bright star community outreach is one that is very special we have the opportunity to work with students that maybe have compromised in their behaviors at school we don't want them to get stumped or feel thrown away because they may have made one mistake or maybe two mistakes but we want to give them the strategies to do better and be better the students maybe did not choose us the parents or maybe the institutions saw that we would be a good fit for these children and so we were privileged that they reached out to us to say hey can you come and help us with our youth that are not quite making the best decisions for themselves also with mentorship we're able to give our kids counseling guidance and all the necessary tools they need so that they can be successful in society yeah our technology program partners with asha and these north shore students tutor our students in the areas of literacy and technology their students range between the ages of eighth grade and twelfth grade they tutor our third grade through fifth grade students this program has created means for us to have racial reconciliation diverse learning social skills and improvement in grades along with our out of school youth summer employment truancy education and mentoring family advocacy center and safe passages programs we are excited to launch our newest program for trauma counseling we are intentional about bringing resources to our community to advance workforce in bronzeville we've established a bold goal providing five thousand greater bronzeville residents ages 16 to 25 with incomes that contribute to household sustainability we've established a three-year plan that's going to break this goal down supplying 500 jobs per year we know about the initiatives are coming to our area and we want to be at the forefront of making sure that our households are sustainable we're going through great strides to find capable competent and committed people to work with our young people because what they lack nowadays is point of reference and opportunity and bsco is providing both of those we didn't talk about protective factors and risk factors as a church as faith leaders but i understood clearly that one thing that we have as pastors is something that everybody wants access to and that's people people that are impacted by health violence trauma and so many other things and why are we suggesting that people turn for lack of a better term to faith leaders and the faith community because the faith community has consistent engagement with the community no matter what anybody thinks they come to us far more than they do anybody else number two because we are pretty good at community organizing and that's been the joy of my life getting people to come together for one common goal for one common purpose and then number three clergy influence now all of you all know just be honest one of the reasons that politicians love preachers is because they know when it's time for them to run if they come to the pool pit they come to the congregation and the pastor allows them to greet the people chances are there is an assumption that based on the relationship and based on the access to the people they will get the votes so they know the power of the pool pit and it's really really something that i believe that researchers and those in the medical field also know using this wonderful bridge between resident research medicine called faith leaders and the faith community would be extremely smart now there's a fellow on the screen now there's anybody in the room remember this moment raise your hand anybody what was this moment right after september 11 pretty amazing president bush after this tragedy he goes to where the first responders are and it's pretty amazing he goes to whether trauma or the tragedy is but then when you think about it that's exactly what faith leaders do and the faith community does we're actually planted in the communities where the trauma and the violence is happening we actually lead the folks who are either perpetrators or the victims of violence and trauma and there are five c's that i love people that understand that faith leaders understand in order to be effective or impactful you have to number one be connected now a bright star if you were a bright star you'd have to talk back to me so today i'm going to ask you to talk back to me today everybody say be connected now you got to use your preaching voice say it again say be connected you got to be connected and that's what faith leaders understand if you're going to touch people you're going to impact people you're going to heal people you have to be connected but then the second one is be concerned everybody say be concerned and i love the being concerned because that takes it to a whole another level and then the third one i'll only point out these three out of the five everybody say be compassionate being connected is really important because when you are connected that's when watch this you put your hand in it if i'm connected i'm touching you and the reason we should be turning to faith leaders in faith community is because we touch the people that this hospital and others want to connect to more than anybody we are connected that's when you put your hand in it but then the second one is when you be concerned that's when you go beyond beyond putting your hand in it that's when you put your head in it being concerned means i'm thinking about whoever has been impacted by trauma or violence i know their name i know the mama's name i know their grandmother's name i know their cousin name matter of fact i know their nick names see that's when you're thinking about the people so those in medicine god bless them and we need them those that are in research god bless them and we need them but when they look at data they see in numbers but the faith community see people and that makes all the difference in the world and if we're able to connect the two and marry the two i believe that we will be so much better together and much more impactful being connected is putting your hand in it appreciate you being concerned is putting your head in it but being compassionate is when you put your heart in it and the question becomes do you feel the people you're trying to serve because if you don't feel them then chances are they won't feel you and the faith community understands that so a moment ago we showed you a picture of this fella it was a pivotal moment for him a moment of victory as a leader but when you think about it i wish he had thought about at least three of the five c's in this picture same guy same leader but a different circumstance in exhibit a pretty interesting he went to touch those people but in exhibit b he chose to stay on the plane does anybody remember where this was where was it katrina new orleans and what a lot of people don't want to talk about and it gets pretty sensitive but you invited me and i'm here now is was it because the color of their skin was it because of classism i'm not making an accusation but i am raising the question that i want us to think about now because when it comes to the faith leaders and why i'm encouraging folks to turn to faith leaders in the faith community is because we don't have the privilege of looking at their trauma from a distance we have to live their trauma every single day and we know these folks how many of you all in this room get tired every single monday listening to the news the body count 10 dead 30 shot raise your hand so until you see those individuals on the report as your family members it doesn't go from being connected concern to being compassionate until you see them as your family members until you see violence as your problem until you see trauma as your issue impacting your house so faith leaders decided to do some work and have a conversation with the community through bright star community outreach through what we now call the turn center using the turn model the urban resilience network because we needed a process because we thought we had a great idea to serve our community potentially others through replication and we wanted to know how best to serve them and so we started the ctc process communities that care and it's been exciting it allowed us to actually talk to the community and ask them what could we do to help you because you will never ever be impactful if you feel like you will be effective by helicoptering in and saving people now we believe through the faith community and faith leaders if you give us the tools you give us the education and knowledge and if you resource us our community we will stand up and save ourselves and now we have proof of it we said how could we make sure that the turn center counseling mentorship parenting workforce development and advocacy being our pillars how could we serve the community so we did something strange we asked them through 137 question anonymous youth survey tell us how we can best address your trauma how we can best impact your life and decrease violence so amazingly we were able to survey 19 schools in bronzeville first time out of the gate 2250 students were eligible to take the survey first time 1850 participated went through the irb and rrb process which is pretty amazing and it floored a lot of our partners because how does this community do this the first time out of the gate after the data quality check and can I give you a confession right here since you're listening to a preacher I had no clue what a data quality check was before partnering with our friends at the University of Chicago and northwestern hospital and now we have data with more than 1500 young people have told us exactly what to do and the faith community and faith leaders led the process think about this here is what they said to us there's a lot of information that we have in that data but I wanted to share just four particular points that shook us and why it's driving the work of the turn center you can read it for yourself so I will not insult your intelligence but two of the things that really really blew us away was community engagement and connection but the students were saying was things are good or getting better in the schools the problem is what happens after we leave out of that building the community needs to get itself together but the second thing that I want to raise up that shook us in the work that we do is the fact that more than 35 percent of those students show clinical signs of depression that's more than one out of every three students how many of you are parents in this room please raise your hand keep your hand up high that means one out of every three folks that are around you might have a child who suffers from depression just think about it and when you see this vicious cycle of violence we got to ask ourselves when will it stop and how will it stop but if we don't address these underlying issues it'll never stop and the faith community is leaving this effort we even say it we're going to identify train and certify faith leaders to provide trauma counseling based in on an Israeli model I'll tell you a little bit more about that later but we also wanted to identify and train 50 proctors from our own community who look like the students that were going to be surveyed gave them the opportunity and they were able to implement this and get this data and information so let's move on here is our plan to decrease trauma and violence what is the term model this term model we're excited because it allows us to inspire the entire community this term model it provides opportunity for scalability because once we create something replicable we want to scale up and put it in other places and then last but not least we now have if you get an opportunity go to our website bright star community outreach dot com and on that list of pages that we have on our website is something called the community action plan it speaks to the fact that we have now more than 50 partners organizations including all of the schools in bronzeville teaching us how to and helping us to develop this model on a community level and that's what has made us really excited two focuses child and family services providing parenting mentorship counseling advocacy and economic development and then secondly our community strategy and development opportunity where we do community outreach community assessment and planning safety initiatives project management and then capacity building this is what we've been doing through this term model but here is it I want to fast forward through some of these wonderful descriptions of what those programs are and kind of get to the crux of what's pushing our work and leading all of our efforts after we do after school programs and the team initiative now the be initiative what about this trauma how do we address that all of this work this community effort and this input has pushed us to this wonderful model since january of 2012 unfortunately more than 3,600 people have been murdered in chicago alone not including those who have been shot a wound and the question we had to ask ourselves who did or does the trauma counseling for those families whether it be the victims or the perpetrators family in most cases nobody and let me just share with you what we learned is black and brown people don't go to counseling not exclusively but specifically since those are the folks we've served why four reasons we've pointed out they don't know the counselor they don't trust the counselor they don't think they can afford the counseling and then number four most tragically nobody wants to be labeled crazy but they still come and talk to the faith leader they pick up the phone and call pastor Harris just the other day member of my church by the name of precious who is also one of the mentors in the programs you saw a little bit early unfortunately on 51st and cottage grove while her son and her nephew right outside her house was just going into the trunk of the car somebody drove up and sprayed bullets and now they're dead one day one shot and now I have to preach another funeral this coming weekend I want to point out the fact that that's precious only son one more time that's precious only son and so we said what we want to do is identify train and certify these faith leaders to provide trauma counseling based on this Israeli model he's been an exciting ride I'll tell you the tall came over three times now first two times to do an assessment of the south and the west side third time they came here to offer five weeks of intensive training for the faith leaders I want to stop and pause for a moment with these definitions on the screen why do we call it the turn set at first we were calling it the bronzeville dream center but then we went through a name change I got this idea when I went to Israel in the holy land I find it no it's not ironic that I found it got this idea in the holy land but then I went back with people like pastor kneel and pastor Rodney Carter and while we were there I was praying to the Lord and I asked the Lord to give me what the name is supposed to be and I'm in my room can I confess to you guys it blew me away the Lord shared with me he said turn but don't forget I'm a brother from the hood you tell me to turn I'm gonna look around but then the Lord said no no I want you to go and look up the word turn and I did just that and here's what I found the definition of the word turn it's passed to the other side to undergo a transformation or change but the one that really blessed my whole life is the next to the last one to channel one's attention interest thoughts or attention to ward or away from something to something different and that's exactly what we're trying to do with this work this turn model is to turn precious and her sister twin sister angel whose son was shot away from the trauma how did you do that but interestingly enough just like to make a red litch and just like so many others precious called her pastor angel called her pastor and said help me to turn away from this trauma and in the midst of that they're asking why would your god allow this to happen and we all have to constantly say to them we don't have those answers but we do know we can be with you in the process and so here it is I like this one pastor Rodney we raise your hand in the back he found this and this is pretty interesting because if you know who pastor Rodney is you know it's kind of funny that he found a quote from Jay-Z and Kanye West that's just like asking somebody who is a fan of Randy Travis to find a quote from Kanye and it blew us away it says it's a war going on outside we ain't safe from I feel the pain in my city wherever I go 314 soldiers died in Iraq 509 died in Chicago think about that and where the funerals happen for those folks in the church the one who has to give them hope and healing is in the church that's why we say in turn to the faith leaders so we went through this training it's been exciting but what blew me away was the fact that in order for us to go through this training we had to deal with our own trauma now the healing needs healing and we had to deal with stuff from our childhood that we never ever faced before because we prayed about it and we moved on and that's why this work is important that we're doing offering this trauma counseling we went through that five weeks of training and continued more training after that and continuing training even now and now we're excited about being able to say we don't just want to take one focus one side of the work that we're doing is developing advocates who would be the individuals who would call the helpline or as those who are trauma victims they call the helpline and these advocates would pick up the phone and take them through this process of dealing with their trauma but then the second group are the folks that we call ambassadors these ambassadors go throughout the community and make the community trauma-informed because what we found is many of the folks in our community don't even realize they have faced or experienced trauma you know what we say in our community it is what it is pray for me that's life and let's move on and it goes unaddressed but my mom who is here today can't believe she walked in and blew me away raise your hand mom let me give you credibility thanks because i'm hoping she'll cook for me later on the day and nothing like mom was cooking right my mama taught me something that i'll never forget son hurting people tend to hurt people let me ask a question do me a favor take off your professionalism take off your expertise take off all that and just be a person for a moment how many of you all in this room have ever gone through a traumatic experience and you wish you had a trusted partner to talk to raise your hand thank you for your honesty and that's exactly what these folks in the community are calling for who can i talk to who can i run to who can help me with this and so in developing this model of advocates and ambassador helps us to address it and helps us to inform the community and they're calling for it it's not just us saying that this is what we think is needed but the community is saying this is what's needed help for some youth who are at risk in chicago a new community outreach center will help children deal with the trauma of violence in their community one of the things that i love about bsco is its intentionality to collaborate with one another along with our partners from northwestern medicine and university along with university of chicago medicine school of social service administration including the crime lab so many partners we've built this huge ecosystem that really expands support across the entire community we've heard from the voices and have partnership from a variety of stakeholders in the community in the education sector the mental health sector social science and research centers they've had lots of other trainings that i and now alayne smith our new clinical care coordinator has been doing and it's been really exciting seeing them continue to grow we've worked on how to work with risk and domestic violence and substance abuse and they've done lots more simulations for those being on the helpline and those who are going to be ambassadors they've been trained in the different presentations that they're going to be doing and it's really exciting starting to see all this come through as a tourism ambassador who knew after the five-week ruling training that we went through that my family would need healing my son was recently shot on the streets of chicago five times now the healer needs healing i survived the death of my son he got murdered in april of 2013 i was devastated when i walked in that backyard and i saw them putting that sheet on my baby i was in shock so much so to the tears wouldn't flow the anger didn't come it was just shock and i didn't know at the time that i was in shock i i didn't know how to grieve because i had never felt that kind of pain i was able to call them at two three in the morning and they would answer my phone calls i mean i had never had no support like that if i can get through this from where i was at anybody can get through this i'm excited about being a part of bright star community outreach just turn center it's going to bring transition change is going to give awareness and really do some wonderful things in our communities across chicago just the other day this past saturday i experienced my own trauma at my own front door where my children had a wonderful saturday full of activities and games bike riding toy playing just enjoying themselves in the community we come home about 8 p.m a victim is shot right outside of my house right on the front stairwell 59 year old victim and my children are all outside screaming hollering and running trying to get away because all they hear is shots fired if it wasn't for this training or this opportunity i wouldn't know what i would have said to my twin daughters it's teen it's crying and screaming out and thinking that this could have been them on my 17 year old son that's just sitting leaning outside on the car i've heard on more than one occasion hurting people tends to hurt people but if you come get some counseling or whatever support that you need at the turn center that hurting that you feel is going to become joy and when you speak you're going to speak the joy that you feel and not the pain that you felt i'm a trauma survivor i will not classify myself as a victim because i don't feel like i'm a victim let me tell you chicago needs this turn center the piece that's most exciting for me as the clinical psychologist on the team is seeing how bright star as a whole can really come together and do all of the services it's not just the helpline we can get people in at the helpline we can bring them in the door through the ambassadors going out into the community and helping them to realize that what they've experienced actually is trauma and they can connect with the helpline and then we can get them other services we have the wraparound services here so many different areas we've come together and built this huge community plan that really hears the voice of everybody involved so imagine this to fund and support bright star is to fund and support bronzefield that's very huge and we're very excited about having that kind of collaboration that has that kind of impact that's one of the many strengths of bright star at the urban resilience network bsc l is strengthening hope and saving lives please visit bright star community outreach dot com for more information northwestern the research chicago the united way and i literally just left the meeting a moment ago because now sygna has become a strategic partner of our work we're really really excited funding us and supporting us not just with writing a check but giving us the human capacity or the human capacity to be able to build our capacity of the organization the human capital is what i was looking for and what i love about these partners these experts some of them which are in the room bring the battle in the back and also leif elsmo and dr dorian miller these individuals who have been at the table with us on a constant basis and since he's been here now dr selwyn rogers helping us to build out this concept so that we'll be able to build something not only sustainable but something that is also replicable and that's what's really exciting to us we opened up that helpline and here's what the folks from israel told us they said pastor harris in my last eight minutes that i had they said listen don't give discourage people probably won't call for the first two years and they told us prepare yourself they won't call for two years we opened july fifth and right now today we have up to 28 callers now we have a mixed emotion about that because we're excited that people are calling and utilizing the resource that we knew that they needed and that they were calling for what was said because they actually needed and so this helpline people like pastor might kneel raise your hand who is not only one of the individuals who is prepared and trained to answer the phone but also doing the ambassador work of going throughout the community making the community trauma informed we know we're on to something and it's pretty amazing and we're excited about it there's an opportunity for you to follow our work so if you want to take out your smartphones right now and if you want to text the word turn center without any spaces to 55469 it will allow you to receive more information about what's happening at bright star community outreach i wanted to rush through this presentation so that we can have a real conversation and be able to talk with you as we bring back dr rogers and open the floor for all kind of questions you have i'm going to ask that dr cindy langley and rottney carter if you guys can come down and join us would you clap your hands for them as they come so um i don't have to say the floor is open for questions but i won't say the pulpit because there's no pulpit there you go lectern please so this is a chance to be community focused i mean i think one one of the things that's great about this opportunity is we actually are reaching outside of our traditional four walls of the hospital doing great works every day within the walls of the hospital but how can we actually bridge that and get into the community so there's a question back there absolutely absolutely thank you for those um statements and question so first and foremost uh we realize that bright star community outreach we cannot be all things to all people right so while it is our hope right to be able to in the future through our community development work that we're doing to provide housing our goal right now is to get inside the house those who are there who are inside the house and be able to impact that entire family so i agree with you one of the other things i can share with you as well i still believe no matter what we are uh going to do currently doing or have done in the past i still believe without a shadow of a doubt that the best violence prevention is access to a quality education for our children and then access to house sustaining um jobs and employment and entrepreneurship because if you don't give them money then guess what at the end of the day you're going to continue to have violence because people are selling drugs because people are joining gangs and that's a far bigger problem but i will say we do address the employment issue through our united way we are the lead agency for the united way in the bronze wheel community through our greater bronze wheel neighborhood network and so right me i have you talk a little bit about those jobs that we're providing now absolutely thank you and thank you for that question as well and so the beauty of this term model is that the mental health component is one of five pillars that addresses that we use to address violence prevention and one of the other five pillars is workforce as well and so as pastor harris said what we want to do is partner with the community to have a holistic approach as a community in bronzeville to address issues that not only do the community think we need to address but that data shows should be addressed and so one of those is workforce and so as the lead agency of the greater bronzeville neighborhood network we have a partnership of 15 organizations in bronzeville that specifically works toward workforce and so we've been doing a lot of work collectively around bronzeville to help build that pathway to where we can increase the access to employment throughout bronzeville so it's been very effective for the past fiscal year i believe between june of last year to july of this year we were able to serve 21 000 residents in bronzeville to have a combination of either temporary employment full-time employment job readiness training all of these different types of things so we agree with you that we definitely think the way to really holistically address violence prevention is not just mental health it's a very important piece but we really are trying to look at this holistically so thank you for that question that's right and bright star itself that's why in the first video we started off with we've been able to employ 308 people on an annual basis just with bsco and that's full and part-time and then when you think about the greater bronzeville neighborhood network and then all of our partners that are in our greater bronzeville community action plan it provides us to on the communal level provide those jobs so just as an example and a little bit of the expansion on what brought me shared is just through our network we were able to provide 900 youth with jobs this year just around that work and that's been really really exciting to provide those jobs getting those young people off of the street and so we look forward to sharing more with you if you have more questions around that so you're right they need jobs they need quality education it's important and then housing quite naturally thought of a statement um as to I just want to thank you guys for the work you're doing the mental health piece in our community is president um if you don't know who I am I'm D'nash I'm the guy that walked from Chicago to the White House about our boys and this man right here we met shutting down 47th street laying down on the ground um I'm the boots on the ground piece I see it every day these young men you can't change their their mindset by just giving them a job you have to deal with the mental health issue and this is really going to change and turn the tide in our community because a lot of times you know I didn't want anybody in this room to walk God gave me assignments to walk so you guys could do the job that you guys are doing so I did that part but this is incredible because I see it every day that these young men don't have conflict resolution they don't have good people skills and a lot of times it's not trickling down from the academics to the community and this is the the best thing I've seen in a long time and I snuck up on past then he knew I was gonna come because I hadn't been around him but thank you guys thank everybody in here I want to thank you for walking across America he now now I just want to be clear Demetrius Nash it's not a joke he actually walked across America he walked from here to the White House and it's pretty amazing just got back a few weeks ago and so and the goal was to raise awareness around this particular issue of violence and trauma so thank you for your commitment and the work that you do especially coming back to the community that you came from so we appreciate you as someone ponders next question how can we facilitate this for everyone greater academic community community academic partnerships I think finding that's why this turning to faith leaders and turn into the faith community is really really important because there has to be a bridge that connects the two so I used a little bit earlier the term connecting resident to researcher right and how do we allow the academic piece to get involved think about this one more time we surveyed our community 19 schools 81 percent response rate the first time out of the gate since the days of Tuskegee you don't research black people it's a sensitive area but to have a trusted partner to say we want to make sure we connect resident to researcher we want to connect those in the community to academics in the hospital we think that's important but there has to be that trust bridge that is built and we've been able to do that what I love about this is our partners including Dr. Deborah Gorman Smith who has been a part of this process with SSA these folks that have sat at the table have stood back and said we're going to let the community lead it it's for the community by the community but not just the community and we have been successful in creating that kind of model so now those that are in academics they teach us a language that we did not speak and then we teach those that are in academia a language they didn't speak including speaking in tones that's a private joke but i'm trying to tell you we we you know what that is okay so so we speak each other's language now risk factors protective factors all of those things but the community trusts us to say okay pastor Harris if you're going to have the cvc to come in and give a research grant of six million dollars which they did here's what i say great we want to partner with that but what you're going to do is you're going to give 40 percent of those research dollars to implement programs that are evidence-based so that we can move the needle on what you knew in the first place before you had numbers to prove it out they went for it first of all because they had no choice but also because they knew that was the right thing to do and so that's why you have programs like b and programs like team partnering with the hospitals partnering with the community because we actually do believe we're better together so if the academics or those that are in academia want to impact the community let the community lead it find a trusted partner that is able to be the bridge between both other questions yes i talk a lot at my dinner table about trends in my faith's community about participation in our congregation and congregations across the country what are the trends that you see in your neighborhood about how people our age and our children and our parents and who and their perception of you as a clergy person and how receptive they are to you talking to them so i'll start and now pass it over to ratney this is one of his favorite subjects um it's pretty interesting because i have a challenge with pastors or any clergy who want to stay inside the four walls i don't like it i think it's wrong right we have a responsibility morally and spiritually to come outside of the four walls of the church and be connected to the community unfortunately this generation is losing faith in the faith community because while laquan mcdonalds are dying right the preachers are still preaching the church people are still having great worship but offering no services to the community but we have actually been blessed to find a constituency of more than a hundred pastors and community leaders who said we do want to get outside the four walls of the church and we want to speak the language of those young people and there is no way especially in the generation that has snapchat and all of those other things that none of us understand right some of us in here still have my space pages right you cannot do eight track outreach in an ipad generation you just can't so we have to figure out how to speak their language connect to them and one of the things that the young people told us through the data is you guys don't have a clue i'll pass it over to ratney on that absolutely and thank you for one of the things i love about pastor harris as you can tell is that he has no problem pushing the envelope right and to that point if i can just follow in his footsteps another trend which i think is a bit of a positive trend that we're seeing if i can just be honest and forward is that we're seeing thankfully more faith leaders probably not enough but more faith leaders who if i be honest when it comes to dealing with mental health are willing to accept and acknowledge and share with people that to really effectively address that it's probably going to take more than just praying for them and anointing them in these different type of things but it really does take really having a conversation or really addressing this in a different type of way and so i think that this is definitely a positive trend that i think we are seeing more of in the faith community and those are the type of faith leaders that we really want to partner with to really be able to address the trauma concern that we're having in bronze wheel so thank you for that question if i can ask a question which ties into that is how do you change to a narrative and this may be for everyone around what mental wellness is if i break my finger everybody wants to fix my finger if i break my spirit nobody in our african-american community wants to go to deal with their break and spirit they want you to pray for them yep but they may not want so how do we engage in a different is it the words you mentioned the word crazy i'm mentally unwell i accept that but i'm on a journey and i accept the help that i need to maintain my wealth and mental wellness we've talked about that so for sure we have this we have this volleyball approach that we use uh sometimes i would serve the ball and they spike it and so i'm gonna serve this one and then dr. cindy langley is gonna spike it i promise you that one uh one of the one of the interesting things was getting clergy faith leaders and those that are in the faith community to understand that this work is designed to keep the community safe not get them saved that's a big deal and we have had to share with our colleagues some of our colleagues we've had to say you can't do this work because you clearly don't understand this is not a membership recruitment ground right and it's been really really challenging but we're holding to that and the only folks in the faith community and the faith and community leaders that we allow to get become a part of that work is folks who are willing to go through the kind of training to understand that this is a whole another level and let me pass it over to the woman one of the women who have actually traumatized me quite a bit in this training dr. cindy langley and so i have to spike the ball and have traumatized you that is quite the setup um so you know i think i think part of the problem is how we talk about it and so with mental health we talk about those people who are mentally ill those people who are struggling but with physical health we talk about we all have physical health we all go to the doctor regularly we all you know at least know we're supposed to eat right and exercise whether we do or not who knows but we talk about our physical health all the time how often do you talk about your mental health how often do you engage in conversations about what does it mean to continually work towards being mentally healthy and that it's okay to reach out and go to a doctor it's okay to reach out for that extra support when it's needed just like if i break my finger i'm going to show up in the er because i know i need to get that help and so that's a lot of what the ambassadors like pastor neal is doing is helping to really kind of change that story within the community that it's not a bad thing to need that extra help it is not a bad thing to want somebody to just listen and not say well you need to do this and this and this no maybe i don't need to do anything maybe i just need to talk to you and i need to be sad and i need to be okay with being sad with you and that's what the ambassadors are doing is trying to help change that narrative what was pretty amazing in this training that we went through is they asked us to give our favorite scripture in the bible as pastors and we gave it and in that training they put that scripture on the screen and showed us how if we inappropriately use that scripture it could cause more trauma for that person floored us and many of us in the training were saying we wish we had known this many years ago but now that we know better we can do better and we're able to share that with our colleagues as well this model is a train the train of model so now we're learning so that we can continue to teach but what we will also learn is we will always be students in this work next question um just to kind of flip that question around as pastors um it like it sounds like you're you're recognizing places um where you can encourage um more than just prayer and other resources and things but on the flip what would your um advice or caution be to healthcare professionals um who work in a secular field and like with this trend of secularism as kind of like sometimes we think of secularism as there can be no talk about faith as opposed to an openness to a variety of faiths um so when spiritual questions are raised in a medical environment um it can be easy to to just want to dump it off on the chaplain but what would your like advice be about addressing spiritual matters this is pretty simple for me uh number one follow the rules right i want to be clear about that um but then secondly let that person lead the conversation let them take you to where they want to take you and that's what i learned most about this uh trauma counseling especially with the approach that we are now endeavoring upon because i'm not there to fix them i'm just there to be with them even through this training we learned the difference and i didn't even know i didn't know it we learned the difference between sympathy and empathy which we didn't really know so it's the equivalent of sympathy is if the person is in a hole and i'm up here kind of looking down in there and say oh that's pretty tough right but empathy is when i get down there with them and sometimes i don't need to do anything sometimes i just need to be what they need me to be and that is there so i think it is a very very challenging line and pretty thin but we did learn that there will be times where they're going to bring up their faith and if that's what helps them to heal then that's what we're going to allow them to talk about we won't push it on them but as a clinician i i think i should jump in there today yep um thank you for asking that question and if i may i think this topic here is one of the beauties of this model as it relates to how we want to address trauma because the reality is the faith community for the longest time has been very key in building hope and resilience and people they've been doing it for a long time and so the beauty of what we want to do with this model is really not do away with one of the worlds but figure out how can we complement and blend these two worlds together how can we take what we call a divine strength that faith leaders have to build hope and resilience and incorporate it with more trauma informed disciplines and care with what they have always been doing for a long period of time and so i'm glad you asked that question because the key here is not to demean or belittle either of the two worlds but how can we take the strength of both worlds and bring them together and that is what i believe we've been learning to effectively do bring both of those strengths together the only comment i was going to make about that and come in follow up is in those moments when people are suffering the most be it a loss or a loss of function or threatened loss of life certainly what i feel is in that moment people want more than anything else to feel cared for and cared about that's more spiritual than religious that's actually about accompaniment and often it's to do something really uncomfortable shut up and just be there and that's really hard for us as physicians and sometimes nurses but especially physicians because we spend so little time actually silent it's an order a medication a thing a task a do but how often do we just be present and that's what people feel the most at Bendix before he said it one of our good friends posh charles from northwestern he coined this term with this work is before we can heal we must listen and so i want to be fair it's not just doctors or nurses preachers definitely don't know how to shut up because we speak for a living this is what we do we've been called to speak but this has trained us to be great listeners for sure this is amazing stuff and what i see what i read when i look at what you're doing i see civic action i see civic action inspired by and situated on a foundation of faith since it is civic action uh one question that i have for you is how to expand the civic engagement of the civic institutions whose place you're filling and how have you engaged with the broader civic structure that may at some level you showed pictures of george bush right he walked to the white house that's our civic structure where's the the engagement however you want to phrase it up or down but towards downtown yeah so thank you for that question and it's really really important to us and so you're right um this is civic leadership right strong foundation of faith um the very short answer is go in and burst bubbles go inside it and then pull those people that are inside out first thing second thing is the five core competencies again counseling mentorship parent and workforce development and the last one is advocacy which is civics right in many schools nowadays unfortunately they have taken civics out of the school right and so the reason we said from an advocacy perspective is we firmly believe you cannot change a community situation until you teach the community how to impact legislation and so that's where the bronzeville youth advocacy council has been developed which represents all of the schools in the bronzeville community so that we could bring those young people and put policy in them because even if their mama don't believe or their father don't believe that voting matters because based on perception it doesn't look like it does if we put policy into those young people help them to become activists and advocates based on information not ignorant passion and what we do is we inform them they go home and inform their parents and now their parents will go and vote based on that information based on the leadership that we've developed and also those young people that are ninth grade they're going to end up being 18 after a while so they will not only become the voters they will potentially become the folks that are voted for and because we have wired them for lack of a better term with this effort and this information and this knowledge now when they get in seats of power and influence they can help shift the paradigm of the thinking inside the bubble that they usually were not welcomed into two things two things real quick we would encourage everybody which is a part of our work to read two books particularly number one post traumatic slave syndrome written by Dr. Joy DeGru which is informing a lot of our work and then secondly a book written by Michelle Alexander the new Jim Crow so we require our young people to read those kinds of books this coming Monday we got Dr. DeGru coming into town again for the third time to teach the adults you've done it twice but this Monday we're excited about it it's a full day with our students to help them with exactly what you're talking about one another component is going in those communities and getting some of those superstar young young men that we can that we can pick out and give them those the training you know what I'm saying because a lot of a lot of times what I'm finding is at 39 sometimes I'll be one of the youngest people in the room and we got to find a way to engage these younger folks to get in these rooms like I stumbled upon this somebody called me and but we got to get them in the room to get them in a game because they're more out if we give some of those guys with the guns in their hands because they smart we pick some of those superstar players out give them the training and in the end it can you know it can it can really um so what are we looking to do some of those type of things and really get the ones that actually right now with a gun in their hand absolutely through the Bronzeville Youth Advocacy Council we're doing exactly what you're saying and then secondly through the training that's going to happen Monday it's specifically geared toward 9th through 11th graders so we can find and identify those superstar young people and through the Bronzeville Community Action Council of the which many of us in the room we sit on that council which is made up of all schools in Bronzeville principles of the stakeholders we're making sure through those conversations because it's community led identify those young people let them lead the effort because they know what they're talking about and as we continue to educate and inform them and empower them then we will thus end up emancipating them that's what's really been excited about this it's exciting about this because the young people are absolutely involved last question i'll give the elder statement in the back the last opportunity yes thank you very much for your work you know I was part of your print your workshops that you had at South Shore and so forth my name is Hunter Adams III my background is in cultural neuroscience what I would like to to ask two things number one for the youth that have gone through the program have any of your partners Northwestern U of C thought about or consider or maybe you already have developed some career path trajectory for those students who want to pursue this line of work of helping people by understanding trauma I think if you haven't done I think it would be a great way to get them involved early in appreciating science the second thing is the black psychiatrists of America along with representative Elijah Cummings in the Royal Circle Foundation they convene every other year a mental health forum on Capitol Hill and also the black psychiatrists have an annual conference next year I think one of the focus is going to be on trauma so I would invite you to consider being there one of you to present this model because there's a lot of models around the country and people are doing this work in their various professional disciplines so it'll be good so other people can hear your successes your stories your challenges that you deal with you know you got a lot particularly coming from the faith perspective thank you very much so thank you for that listen get us in we'll come on in for sure I always use this statement say you ain't saying nothing's slick to a candle or we want to be there so that would be that would be fantastic so please make the connection and we would love that to your first question the answer is yes our friends from Northwestern University of Chicago the United Way and again now Signe they have been opening their doors to our young people that are through our through our summer jobs programs and cause given them the ability to work in the hospitals which has been pretty amazing so we have our young people that work for us anywhere between retail and research they've been a part of that many of them were employed over at SSA so they have absolutely opened the doors that's been the benefit of having these different partners not only to write a check but to be a part of the work they are part of our steering committee our ops committee they meet once many of them several times a month right helping us to build out this model for the last four years so they are intrinsically woven into this work and it's been really really exciting so please share the word all of you all share the word again our website is bright star community outreach dot com and whatever you do please let folks know that the helpline is open the ambassadors are armed and ready to be able to come into the community and the last thing that I'll say as I pass over the microphone I want to thank my lovely wife who showed up today my mama and my wife surprised me today this is a great day have a great day everybody God bless you and thank you I have a few few comments I want to thank Matthew who did all our help with AV we had a little technical glitches at the beginning and Matthew did a great job of resolving those Sarah wanted to school as well as a jasmine solola who's you know tirelessly helping to keep this moving over the next year next week we have an incredible talk from a different lens Adam Foss former assistant district attorney Suffolk County district in Boston is going to give a talk on the evolution of a prosecutor moving to a public health model of justice is a different element of this work we often ignore that in spaces around health and wellness but obviously the criminal justice system is a very important aspect of this continuum last I want to again thank Pastor Rodney thank you Sarah but most of all thanks for our speaker for doing all the due diligence to put this incredible talk that's very impactful to connect us more deeply with the communities that we serve so thank you Pastor Harris thanks for having us thank you