Riverside Trauma Center’s 6th Annual Conference

We are very excited about our upcoming annual conference, “You Come to Us Endangered”: Legacies of Community Trauma, Narratives of Healing and Resilience, taking place in Natick, MA, on September 22.

The conference will focus on the impact of trauma on communities, and what can be done to promote healing and resilience. The theme will be examined through the lens of community narratives that are created after traumatic events. We will be drawing from the experiences of select communities, including Ferguson, MO, the Black Lives Matter movement, American Muslims, and urban LGBTQ youth. We will look at the ways these communities have used collective sharing, group work, political organizing, theater, poetry, and other forms of expression to shift narratives and create healing stories.

We have an incredible lineup of speakers, including:

• Vetta Sanders Thompson, PhD, Professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work in the Public Health and Urban Studies Programs at Washington University, St. Louis, will be talking about “Addressing Community Mental Health in the Wake of Civil Unrest.”
• Jack Saul, PhD, the Director of the International Trauma Studies Program and Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s School of Public Health, will be speaking about “Clinical and Community Responses to Collective Trauma.”
• Our very own Waheeda Saif, LMHC, Program Coordinator at Riverside Trauma Center, will be sharing “Clinical Implications of Islamophobia and its Impact Beyond the Muslim Community.”

The conference will also have a couple of special events that will showcase how art is being used by young people today to express their views of the struggle with community trauma.

More information and online registration are available at www.communitytrauma.eventbrite.com. We look forward to a powerful and engaging conference, and hope you will join us.

~Larry Berkowitz, EdD, Director, Riverside Trauma Center