OUR GUIDING VISION
The TTP builds on a passion for the possible in chronically traumatized young people. This passion shapes the TTP’s central goal: to equip those who work with trauma-impacted young people with the skills and attitudes they need to transform trauma’s horizon-limiting impacts and empower these youth to reach for their full and unique potential, no matter what their challenges have been.
WHY TTP WORKS
The TTP is fundamentally an agent of change. Its changes the ways youth-serving adults understand trauma, themselves, their roles, and the limited perceptions of youth they can bring to their work. The TTP also changes adults’ understanding of these youth from being “at risk” to being “at promise,” transforming the negative beliefs they often mirror back to young people about who they are and what they can be. Ultimately, the TTP changes the perception that youth are the problem into the understanding that they can be the solution.
TTP’s UNIQUE APPROACHThe TTP uses a mix of evidence-based strategies and resources to create positive outcomes for trauma-impacted youth. These tools include:
- The Trauma Lens: in-depth understanding of chronic trauma and shame—and how to identify, disrupt, and transform the often-hidden impacts they have on youths’ developmental stages.
- Neuroscience-based strategies for changing behavior in young people that include skills for strengthening executive function, self-regulation, and motivation.
- The Resiliency Mindset, a set of positive beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes that adults need to adopt if their interactions with young people are to be transformational rather transactional
- Understanding behavior as a language and learning to read—and intervene in—its adaptive messages.
- Skills for strengthening social and emotional development, developing trust, and working with emotions.
- A relational-cultural approach to youth development rooted in the power of growth-fostering, consistently caring relationships and the strengths of culture.
- Skills for creating growth-fostering relationships with youth that turn off their trauma triggers and turn on and sustain their motivation to reach their full and unique potential.
- Training in the continuum of restorative practices.
- Exercises for mindfulness, self-care, and strengthening empathy in youth and adults.
- Ongoing individual and organizational coaching to maximize effectiveness.
TRANSFORMATIONAL DEVELOPMENTAL
YOUTH-PROGRAM CULTURE
The TTP offers an innovative model for trauma-responsive youth development programming. This model wraps young people in a sense of comprehensive safety; creates a feeling of unconditional belonging; fosters socio-emotional skill development; and offers the horizon-building challenges youth need to grow developmentally and thrive, even in the midst of chronic trauma. Using the TTP creates a transformative culture that pairs consistently caring relationships with growth-enhancing activities, practical skills development, and opportunities for leadership and service to create meaning, motivation, and resilience.
The TTP offers a variety of program resources to create this transformative culture, easily adapted for use by schools, community groups, and other youth-serving organizations.
WE MUST BE THE CHANGE: AN INNOVATIVE TRAINING FRAMEWORK
The TTP believes that trauma-responsive work with young people must be an “inside out” job. Before adults can engage in growth-enhancing interactions with trauma-impacted young people, they must be willing to grapple with—and change where necessary—their own experiences with power, authority, discipline, respect, trust, and relationships. The TTP stresses inner work on these experiences because they form the basis of our perceptions and beliefs about trauma-impacted young people, and, ultimately, the quality of relationships we build with them. Neuroscience confirms the powerful shaping influence of this interconnectedness, showing that youth will become what we see, believe, and feel about them. All change, then, must begin with us.
WHAT DO THE TRAININGS LOOK LIKE?
Each training session mixes personal reflection, experiential exercises, and evidence-based education on trauma and resilience to nurture personal and professional growth in youth-serving adults. Complementing these elements, the trainings build individual and organizational capacity by teaching practical skill development and restorative behavioral strategies.
WHAT ABOUT CUSTOMIZATION?
One size doesn’t fit all. The TTP’s comprehensive approach to the trauma-to resilience transformation allows staff to target the skills and practices that best support the work they do with young people. An assessment—conducted collaboratively with individuals and organizations—helps us tailor the training to focus on what participants need most.
IF YOU THINK THE TTP COULD HELP YOU…WE’D LOVE TO TALK.
Anne Carrabino, SSS, MPA
Executive Director, Trauma Transformation Project
Oakland, California 94577
OFFICE | 510-969-7601
MOBILE | 617-592-7608
EMAIL | annemcarra@gmail.com