At last my mini grant has traction!
Self Compassion Matters has LIFT OFF!
Dovecot Farm has two retreats scheduled for next week….
St Mary’s Medical Team on Wednesday 24th March.
A group of therapists and Mental health practitioners in the recovery world on Saturday 27th March…
One fascinating trend is emerging in the DISC evaluation response…
Mini Grant Dyad Expected: As I expected
Mini Grant SenseMaker Project Story or Micro-Narrative
How This Person Interpreted Their Story or Micro-Narrative
South Grade Elementary is a…
South Grade Elementary is a Title I school, where 99% of our students are economically disadvantaged and 97% of our population are minority students, most of which are recent immigrants to the US. We recently became an AVID school, which focuses on college and career readiness from a young age. South Grade Elementary School was the recipient of a mini-grant from Healthier Lake Worth; the grant was in support our 4th and 5th grade Avid students obtaining a shirt that promote college readiness. On February 25th we had a grand revealing of the shirt, that was designed in-house. It was a beautiful sight to see our students proudly wearing their “Straight out of Avid, Straight into College” shirt. Every Thursday is Avid day and we wear our Avid shirt. The shirt is a constant reminder to our students that they have the potential to be great and to achieve great things.
Working on Center for Child Counseling’s…
Working on Center for Child Counseling’s training, Healing the Healers: Creating Happy Healthy Healers and a Happy Healthy Workforce, during this global pandemic has been an interesting and eye-opening endeavor. In our lifetime, there has never been a more challenging time in health and mental health care in terms of the major stressors professionals and clients/patients alike are experiencing at the same time. Working as a helper/healer has always been a challenging and stressful career choice, although for those who survive and thrive in such careers long-term, we also find tremendous reward, satisfaction, and joy from our work. However, with the stress of COVID-19, as well as other concurrent stressors (racial unrest/violence, rise in hate speech and hate crimes, political polarization and upheaval) that we have experienced in the US in the past year, there has been significant rise in the need for both health and mental health care, pushing our medical mental health institutions/providers to the limit, and significantly and adversely impacting the well-being of many of helpers/healers, for example, increased rates of anxiety, depression, acute and posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicide seen in frontline healthcare workers.For helping and healing professionals, it has always been important for us to think and talk about stress, vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, stress management, compassion satisfaction, resilience building, self-regulation, and self-care, although it is often overlooked or under-focused upon by our training programs, as well as supervisors and administrators in the institutions and agencies where we work. Honestly, I personally have significant regrets that I did not spend enough time on these topics in the many years I was an administrator overseeing and supervising a team of child trauma therapists. It is easy to overly focus on our interventions/treatments with our clients, measuring outcomes, paperwork, billing, etc., but doing so without concurrently focusing on the topics included in our Healing the Healers training is very short-sighted. Client care and health of our organizations/institutions directly relates to health and well-being of the individual workers. In the current climate, our need to focus on these topics is greatly magnified and must be in the forefront of our conversations as helpers/healers. The overused, but nevertheless very important analogy of putting your own oxygen mask on a plane during an emergency before helping others with theirs rings abundantly true today! Plus, the good news is that even in the face of COVID-19 and other concurrent societal stressors, there are strategies to combat stress on an individual and organizational level that can dramatically improve the well-being of all helpers/healers, including those most vulnerable to stress, and this, in turn, will lead to improved care of all of clients/patients and healthier, better-functioning organizations. With that being said, once our team completed a first draft of our Healing the Healers presentation, Power Point and notes, and the pandemic dragged on (with all the associated personal and professional issues it created for helpers/healers and their patients/clients alike), we realized that there was a need to expand this part of our presentation to include the latest anecdotal and research data on the impact COVID-19 was having on helping /healing professionals, and what support and assistance was most needed at this time. We have now done this, while continuing to monitor the emerging literature, so we can make any necessary updates to our presentation. At this point, we have a rich 4.5-hour Power Point presentation completed that covers the types and roles of helpers/heaters; causes and types of stress; biology/physiology of stress; ACEs and their relationship to stress and well-being; impacts of stress (burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue); challenges faced by specific groups of helpers/healers (African-American and other minority and LGBTQ healers); COVID-19 and the impact on helpers/healers; and self-care, self-regulation, and resilience building. Our next step is to record the presentation, so we can the disseminate it before we as an organization are able to return to doing live trainings. Even though we cannot do this training live at this time, in addition to information we included in the training, we have added videos, role-plays, activities, and resources to make it as engaging and interactive as possible. We are stuck by how timely and important this training is for our community of helpers/healers, and we feel so grateful to have the opportunity and funding to do this at the very time it is so desperately needed.
In my mini grant experience…
In my mini grant experience it has beyond awesome! My first experience was involving the youth! I was to teach the kids about photography! We went out into the Glades and we share and compare personal feelings to the photos that were taken! We discussed how a picture has so many different meanings it was all about how you were able to look at it. I was able to give them a real hands on experience before COVID! My current mini grant has to do with getting back to basics! We are actually in process of building a garden retreat! Between planting and growing and teaching the youth in the same manner it helps them to appreciate the skills and value of bringing something to life and watching it grow! Also in the garden we have a buddy bench, to where your able to go and sit when it’s been a long day and you just need someone to talk to! Its so much more but I will rather wait until we reveal it!
One client, Mr. L, is…
One client, Mr. L, is a former boxer who truly understood the importance of fitness. I could see a difference just in the few sessions we had.
One of the most effective…
One of the most effective Silver Fox outreach efforts is the Tiki Market Mini Sessions. This allows direct interaction with Seniors in the target zipcodes. I gathered more that 30 prospects over 2 days and converted 11 into clients and great prospects. Silver Fox provided more than 20 hours of complementary training to Seniors.
Silver Fox Elite Fitness is…
Silver Fox Elite Fitness is committed to carving Black and Caribbean Seniors a culturally relevant space in the fitness industry. The voices of Seniors is key to this goal. On February 13th Silver Fox hosted the inaugural Virtual Black Senior Fitness Fair providing a platform for Senior voices on issues of health and wellness. The event featured Ernestine Shepard, the legendary 84 year old body builder and fitness professional. Black Senior Fitness Fair segments can be viewed on the Silver Fox Elite Fitness Facebook Channel https://bit.ly/silverfoxelitefitness
Providing fitness services to Seniors is…
Providing fitness services to Seniors is vital. The human body “needs to keep moving to keep moving.” Healthy Seniors are an inspiration and helping Black Seniors increase their health and physicality is an act of Sankofa, or “going back to correct what has not been done”, for those of us who help make this happen. Creating Silver Fox Elite Fitness is the most important work I have done in my many, many years as a working adult. Silver Fox is committed to making the Golden Years the best years and will continue to tear down the challenges of Ageism and marginalizing for elders regardless of socio-economic conditions.
Thanks to the support of…
Thanks to the support of the Healthier Neighbors mini grant, I was able to Fast Track my training as a Silver Sneakers Flex instructor. I can now offer culturally relevant fitness classes to Silver Sneakers members as no charge. (imagine fitness classes with Motown! Doo Wop! Jazz! Drum! etc.)
Silver Fox is also preparing to bring a variety of culturally relevant fitness options directly to Community Seniors through non-profits, Community Based Organizations, Senior Living sites, and Senior Day programs. With the right support, we are poised to bring: QiGong for Cane or Chair, Kemetic Yoga for Seniors, African and Caribbean Dance for Seniors in the future.
Virtual Fitness Studios -Thank ms Community partners of Southern Florida
Thanks to the help of Community Partners of Southern Florida, I’m able to construct both indoor and outdoor virtual fitness studios so I can continue to serve seniors in spite of the dangers of the COVID pandemic.