Hope Beyond Hurt and the Neighborhood Resilience Project

This week I had the pleasure of being in Johnstown, Pennsylvania for a Trauma-Informed Community Development institute. Last November, I went to Somerset County to meet Hope Beyond Hurt, a multi-county coalition that had formed and was operating at the time as an all volunteer effort. I described to them The Full Press and what I was working on, just having stepped into the role leading HEAL PA, and fortunately for me they wanted to partner. I do not remember if there was someone from a local foundation in the room, or if we were connected by someone who was in the room that day, but following that meeting a foundation took interest in funding the local effort to support its work and align with the work I described at the state level.

The next month, I got to spend some time with the leaders of the coalition trying to support what could be done with a grant. It was a great exercise in taking the macro-level orientation of The Full Press and really thinking about how this can be applied on the ground. The effort must be community-led, but we were not building from scratch on this. Hope Beyond Hurt had been doing this for a couple of years by the time I met them, so the foundation was already built. How do you build upon that foundation to begin making progress was the question. In The Full Press, I talk about how we must have community-led, trauma-informed, systems-focused coalitions. So because Hope Beyond Hurt already had the first element, we focused on building in the others.

A significant chunk of the funding was to go toward a part-time staff person for the coalition. Having led all volunteer efforts before, they can gain energy in amazing ways but can also lose steam quickly, so building that capacity is critical, and supports community-led efforts. The other element that felt like a no brainer to me was to bring in the Neighborhood Resilience Project to train on their Trauma-Informed Community Development framework to mobilize efforts at a hyper-local level to build healthier communities, and includes a data collection tool called imHealthy that supports communities in tracking what their wellbeing is and monitor progress over time. I have known the Neighborhood Resilience Project closely and have admired them for many years, and while I have been involved in summits that convened communities that had been through their institute, I had never been through it myself. So this week was not just some institute that I went to, it was the culmination of about a year’s worth of work, which was led by others but I played a small role in, and got to watch that work and planning come to fruition.

The grant for Hope Beyond Hurt covered three of the four counties present in their broader coalition (just because of geographic limitation of the funder) and there were leaders from three targeted neighborhoods, one in each of the counties being served. These were pilots that were launching, with the hopes from participants to positively impact the communities they live and work in, but also with broader hope from the coalition to generate more interest and support to not only continue the work in those three communities, but also to expand the efforts into other communities across the counties they work in. I got to spend the week with an incredible group of leaders who took the time and gave the effort trying to make their communities better. 

School administrators and staff, retired grandmothers in the community, social workers and counselors, there were a variety of roles people held coming into the room together. But what everyone had in common was a commitment to making other people’s lives better. The needs that were expressed in working to design community initiatives was great. Gun violence, addiction and overdose, problems that are not only present in these communities, these are problems in many places, but locally impact the wellbeing of communities and their residents. These counties were in the Appalachian region targeted by Purdue Pharma as they rolled out oxycontin to the masses that led to the opioid epidemic. This structural violence continues to perpetuate trauma across the populations present in the room this week. Natural disasters are not uncommon in the area, most notably The Great Flood in Johnstown, though there have been other floods, and other disasters, some quite recent, that impact communities and people. Different communities had different histories, though plenty is shared, that informs not just the problems that exist, but the work that needs to be done. But there was not just trauma present in the room, there was tremendous hope for what could be made better through this work. 

Over the course of the week, my friend Father Paul Abernathy from the Neighborhood Resilience Project supported community leaders in understanding methods to promote positive community change. Their training runs through a framework they call Trauma-Informed Community Development, focusing on health and wellbeing, built infrastructure, social movement building, and more. I have gotten to know the work they do in the Hill District of Pittsburgh very well, which is what this framework evolved from, but it was a privilege to get to learn this framework, especially directly from Father Paul, during this week. 

I believe that moving forward the work will compound, and I look forward to seeing what Hope Beyond Hurt continues to do, and how this work spreads within the communities that were present in the room with me throughout the week. I left Johnstown with a comfort knowing that I played a small part in change that will positively impact communities, families, and individuals for a long time to come. It was special to witness community plans grow and it was a privilege to meet so many caring people who want to make change in their communities. It is a wonderful reminder how many people deeply care and want to make the world a better place. There are many ways to do this, and many people to work together. To the friends I made, I believe in you and look forward to seeing how your leadership and work, and your communities, evolve over time. I will continue to do my best to be a voice to elected officials so they know about and support this amazing work, and will work to synthesize what I learn to better shape systems.