National Leader on Empowering Communities to Address ACE’s Will Provide Keynote at annual Forum & Conduct Afternoon Workshop

For nearly two decades, Laura Porter directed a statewide family-community-state partnership that successfully implemented ACE concepts in Washington State. In partnership with over 30 communities and 9 Tribes, she developed the model for increasing the capacity of communities to prevent ACEs and their effects. Implementation of the model resulted in significant reductions in rates of major health, education, and social problems. Porter now works with leaders in more than 30 states, providing education, facilitation, and empowerment strategies for building “Self-Healing Communities“.

For her keynote during the Forum, Porter plans to address “The Magnitude of the Solution“.

“The most powerful drivers of people’s health, safety and productivity are complex and interrelated,” she points out. “We need solutions that address the complexity of problems and foster measurable change in different community contexts at modest costs.  “How do we create those solutions? [We need] a new way of thinking that invites a powerful story to emerge in the lives of uncommon leaders who want a better life for their children.”

Porter’s Keynote will follow the annual “how are the children?” report focused on available data related to ACEs in Washington County and recognition of local champions for children. The Forum and Breakfast will run from 8:00 AM – 10:30 AM as usual.

Interested forum participants are welcome to stay for the 3 ½ hour workshop that will follow (scheduled from 11:00-3:00 PM, including lunch).  During the workshop, Porter will focus on the how to’s of “Creating Self-Healing Communities: What Everyone Ought to Know.” She reports, “Communities that build hope, honesty, and healing mobilize common resources in uncommon ways. They develop positive, appreciative and participatory methods to understand the dreams and aspirations of residents for the future of their children, and to learn what works for whom in what context.”

Porter says workshop participants will be able to:
* Understand and share powerful preventive opportunities across the life course that interrupt the progression of adversity across the life course and transmission of adversity from one generation to the next.
* Name four powerful processes for building community resilience.
* Know the story of one community’s fifteen-year journey toward safe community living, and through that story understand the layering of strategies that is characteristic of Self-Healing Communities.

Funding to support the Workshop and Keynote address was generously provided by the State Office of Rural Health at the RI Dept. of Health.

We are currently pursuing CEU credit for the workshop. If approved, participants can pay fee at the event.

Both the annual Forum and Workshop will be held at the South Kingston Holiday Inn in Saunderstown (note the new location). You are welcome to sign up for one or both events.

Download brochure and registration form here.

For questions, contact Donna Greene at 401-788-2371 or dgreene@southcountyhealth.org