Create New Impactful Ways to Improve Your Clients
The Resilient Leaders Initiative is a nine-month funded social accelerator program for rural eastern NC organizations.
About the Resilient Leaders Initiative
RLI is a nine-month social accelerator program created by Rural Opportunity Institute. We collaborate with public agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide coaching, professional development and funding so their staff can test new ways to serve their communities. Our goal is to support agency staff in breaking the generational cycles of trauma with the communities they serve. Since 2020, we’ve worked with 10 organizations in Edgecombe County and provided them over $250,00 in funding.
How the Initiative Works
Organizations apply and ROI uses resident-driven community input to choose organizations and public agencies for the Initiative. We’ve worked with 10+ organizations to date, like the Wilson County Department of Social Services, the HOPE Alternative Learning Program and the Edgecombe County Courthouse. Over nine months, participants from each group:
1
Explore the possibilities: Staff from each organization do empathy interviews and other research with their communities to discover the challenges their constituents face in using their services. Often there is a target population inside an agency that is most impacted by trauma and stress and currently has an opportunity to be better served.
2
Identify patterns and opportunities: Participants define the specific challenge they want to work on in their community. They identify the patterns that contribute to that challenge and look at ways to address the challenge.
3
Test out possible solutions: The groups create solutions to their chosen challenge with hands-on support from experts in human-centered design, systems thinking, program implementation and evaluation. Each group receives training in trauma-informed practices and anti-racism.
4
Recommend paths forward: Each group designs and tests new organizational policies and practices that address their chosen challenge. They receive access to funds to implement their ideas.
Hear From Our Participants
“Resilient Leaders Initiative has helped me understand that there’s more to my organization than what we see…being able to take time with our coach to learn how to make our services stronger has helped me realize I can pull from many people to succeed in what I do.”
Ashleigh, program participant
“[My team] is now equipped with techniques to help us reset if we need to and take care of ourselves…my self-awareness around wellness has grown tremendously.”
Dr. Lashawnda Washington, program participant
Our Impact: 2021
In our first year of the Resilient Leaders Initiative, ROI worked with five organizations in Edgecombe County to implement trauma-informed and resilience-focused practices.
- Word Tabernacle Church and Impact Academy Preschool taught resilience skills and breathing techniques to their staff, students and parents.
- The REACH Center piloted virtual peer counseling and a homelessness prevention program.
- The HOPE Alternative Learning Program created new job training and socio-emotional support for students and became the first alternative school in the state of North Carolina to successfully bill Medicaid.
- Speight Middle School in Stantonsburg designed new ways to engage Latino/x families.
- Edgecombe County courthouse and Greater Is Coming Ministries partnered to hold community conversations and build out housing and job training support for returning citizens post incarceration.
Our Impact: 2022
In our second year, we expanded the Initiative to work with more organizations across Edgecombe County.
- Edgecombe Community College created a peer mentoring program for students who are single parents.
- The Upper Coastal Plain Council Agency on Aging gave resilience building support and tools to two populations: caregivers of older adults and grandparents who are primary caregivers to youth.
- The Wilson County Department of Social Services implemented technology-based stress management techniques such as Oculus Virtual Reality, Mendi Headband and Core HRV meditation to support their front-line staff. The technology that was implemented is currently used by the US Army and NASA to better manage stress and improve the health of the nervous system.
- Southwest Edgecombe High School tested new ways to care for teachers and promote connection with students.
Bring the Resilient Leaders Initiative
to Your Agency
In rural eastern North Carolina:
ROI is forming a new Initiative cohort with organizations and public agencies in rural eastern North Carolina. If your organization wants to find new ways to address persistent challenges, especially around stress management and trauma, contact ROI co-founder Vichi at vichi@ruralopportunity.org.
Elsewhere in the United States and globally:
ROI has created an open-source curriculum to support public agencies in adopting trauma-informed practices. Our curriculum offers detailed templates and how-to guides to support staff at your agency. ROI seeks to democratize access to trauma-informed practices. For information and to access the curriculum, contact ROI co-founder Vichi at vichi@ruralopportunity.org.
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