Shifting from Trauma-Informed Care to Healing-Centered Engagement featuring Dr. Shawn Ginwright 

Iowa ACEs 360 is excited to host this event with Dr. Shawn Ginwright to explore the principles of Healing-Centered Engagement. Healing-Centered Engagement moves beyond asking, “What has happened to you?” to “What is right with you?” The term, coined by Dr. Ginwright in 2018, describes an asset-based and culturally rooted approach to healing and well-being for young people of color and their adult allies. Dr. Ginwright bases his approach on more than 30 years of research and practice with young people, schools, probation departments, and social workers.

Participants will learn about the principles of Healing-Centered Engagement and hear examples of how to integrate these principles and practices into their work with young people. Dr. Ginwright will present for 45 minutes and then provide an opportunity for Q&A with attendees. 

Before attending, we encourage you to become familiar with his framework with this article: The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

Register Now! 

Thank you to Polk County Decategorization for sponsoring this event! 

About Dr. Ginwright

Shawn Ginwright, PhD is one of the nation’s leading innovators, provocateurs, and thought leaders on African American youth, youth activism, and youth development. He is Professor of Education in the Africana Studies Department and a Senior Research Associate at San Francisco State University. His research examines the ways in which youth in urban communities navigate through the constraints of poverty and struggle to create equality and justice in their schools and communities.

Dr. Ginwright is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flourish Agenda, Inc., a national nonprofit consulting firm, whose mission is to design strategies that unlock the power of healing and engage youth of color and adult allies in transforming their schools and communities. In 2011, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Senior Specialist award from the State Department for his outstanding research and work with urban youth. Dr. Ginwright is the author of Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart; Black Youth Rising: Activism and Radical Healing in Urban America; Black in School--Afrocentric Reform, Black Youth and the Promise of Hip-Hop Culture; and co-editor of Beyond Resistance!: Youth Resistance and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America's Youth.

Dr. Ginwright currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the California Endowment, with oversight of a $3 billion endowment to improve the health of California’s underserved communities. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning at the Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tuffs University. Dr. Ginwright lives in Oakland, CA
with his lovely wife and is currently an empty-nester—both children are in college.

Key points of Healing-Centered Engagement include: 

A healing-centered approach is holistic, involving culture, spirituality, civic action, and collective healing. 

A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather, highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers a more holistic approach to fostering well-being. 

A healing-centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond “what happened to you” to “what’s right with you” and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events.

Healing-centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work, and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power, and control over life situations and restore well-being and healing.