Healing To Hope: A Look Into the Three-Day Credible Messenger Training
Northwest Credible Messenger (NWCM) recently hosted a transformative three-day training program to enhance their youth service initiatives rooted in a model called Healing to Hope. This model guided community leaders, known as Credible Messengers, through a reflective process, helping them understand their own attributes, barriers, and how their wellness impacts their work in the community.
Director of Northwest Credible Messenger Jason Clark said that Healing To Hope participants were encouraged to dig deep within their own wellness and mental health as the baseline to better the youth and communities around them. This foundational approach aimed to help these Credible Messengers understand their "hidden strengths" and embark on a transformative healing journey before guiding others on their own.
"Everything that we do is rooted in the wellness of that young person,” Clark said, allowing the Credible Messengers to overcome their own setbacks so they can approach young people from a different, more effective perspective.
In addition to personal reflection, the program trained these Messengers in outreach and engagement, enabling them to identify community needs and connect with young people who may be involved in gangs and other negative environments. A core tenet of this work, outlined by Clark, was equipping Messengers with the resources and the funding to successfully execute this outreach.
"We have to be the change. We got to stop waiting on somebody to come do it. We got to get out there and do what we can do,” Ervin Yashar Jones, founder of Locked In Fathers Alliance, said while reflecting on his engagement with Healing To Hope.
The three-day immersive experience, which included activities like a collaborative ball-and-rope walk and a community painting, served as an intense bonding experience for the diverse group of facilitators. It provided them with the tools and mindset ultimately to better assist the community as a united front while leaning on their individual strengths and supporting each other's weaknesses.
"It starts with us," Jones reasserted. "We want change. We want to see our community thrive. We got to stop sitting back.
The program is also evolving its strategy, shifting from its successful origins uplifting communities in beauty and barber shops to a community-embedded process for gang intervention. This means utilizing community intervention specialists who have a deep understanding of youth hardship and ability to identify those most in need.
By giving them these tools, the initiative is additionally extending the opportunities for destigmatizing mental health, addressing the trauma that comes from the gang lifestyle, and drawing connections between the community’s abundant resources.
"I'm just a vessel,” Rashan Williams, Executive Director of Shifted Theory Youth Mentoring, said. “The work will continue, and we need you to be on board. We need y'all to continue... You want to see the change, you got to be the change."
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