Detroit Youth-led Healing Hub

According to ACE, one in every four students currently sitting in American classrooms have experienced a traumatic event, and that number is even greater for those living in marginalized communities. Our Radical Solution: Build a Youth-led Healing Space, a safe haven where Detroit youth will help each other lift up resiliency and lead community healing in which they are able to transform their pain into power.

We will provide culturally-rooted trauma informed care, wraparound services, and use restorative practices to help students experiencing recurrent trauma, specifically youth ages 12-21. We aim to reduce disciplinary incidents, decrease suspensions and improve social emotional skills/academic engagement particularly with Tier 3 students. We use peer-peer practices within our work and youth-led initiatives that will lead to radical healing for the youth of Detroit and beyond.

With this hub, we want to take a holistic approach to addressing student trauma in Detroit. Exposure to trauma has a profound impact on cognitive development and academic outcomes and our specific students in Detroit seem to wake up to trauma like its breakfast. We will use healing centered engagement that focuses on the intersectionality of culture, race, gender and class and create a space where healing is experienced collectively. Detroit Youth will be able to use the space as a safe haven to help lift up resiliency for youth in which they are able to center and combat their trauma in a positive collective manner. We will use the Hub to host Healing Circles, host events and for one on one healing sessions. We will have other community initiatives within the hub in order to heal the community as well such as youth-led book clubs, youth-led workshops, youth-led community gardens, and youth-led community cleanups.

We also want the hub to be a place for the community where the spatial experiences trigger body and mind, establishing connections between people, ideas and feelings. Where our youth will engage with community leadership and social action. The project is currently in its early formative stage - planning, gathering support, engaging the community and establishing a strong foundation. We will incorporate educational, physical and social activities vital to bring healing justice to Detroit youth. This project will strengthen the Detroit neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for community members by helping Detroit youth heal from their trauma together so that they can develop the coping strategies and obtain resources necessary to transform their pain into power. When the youth in neighborhoods heal, the community begins to heal. Healing is very much rooted in community. 

Alot of times trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. With this hub, we aim to combat the systemic causes of trauma as well using youth-led activism. We cannot truly combat trauma inside the classroom if we are not dismantling the systems outside of the classroom that created the trauma in the first place. They will grow up to be adults that are committed to breaking generational circles of trauma in our community. The radical solution to this problem is utilizing youth who share the same experiences to help facilitate and lead community healing. We are doing work in a space that feels more like a home with people who feel more like family instead of a space that may be unwelcoming to some that encompass a "clinical aura." Our hope is that this will not just be a moment, but help spark a movement of Healing Justice for the youth of Detroit and beyond.

Our hope is that this will not just be a moment, but help spark a movement of Healing Justice for the youth of Detroit and beyond.