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Our Whole Selves:
Sowing Seeds of Change
for Whole Community Transformation

The 2021 North Carolina Academy on Community-Level Prevention will be held November 4-5, 2021. Register now!

Sowing seeds of change

to transform our communities

At the North Carolina 2021 Academy on Community-Level Prevention, we are taking a holistic approach to community healing and connection to prevention sexual violence.

Bringing our whole selves into our work

What does it mean to show up with integrity, to truly do the work to change our communities? How do we stay sustainable in work that is challenging, that often sits at the intersections of our own traumas?

Contextualizing childhood trauma

What if we thought of adverse childhood experiences as adverse community experiences, and shifted our communities to support children and families and to build resilience?

Authentic community engagement

How do we put our principles into practice, doing work at the community and society levels of the social ecological model to create lasting change and build meaningful relationships?

Getting started

What can we do, right where we are and right now, to begin the work of community transformation to prevent all forms of sexual violence for all people, with a racial equity, anti-oppression lens?

Speakers

We are delighted to welcome speakers with a wealth of expertise, lived experiences, and perspectives from all over the United States! Learn more about all our speakers by clicking “updates” to see all speaker announcements!

alexis flanagan

Alexis Flanagan is the Co-Director of Resonance Network. Alexis is a queer Black feminist DC girl whose heart pumps to the beat of “the Pocket” that holds down DC go-go music and culture. She is a cultural worker, writer, artist, healer, and organizer working at the intersection of art and activism in the DC Metropolitan Area. Alexis has led programs and organizations working to end sexual and intimate partner violence for more than a decade, most recently serving 5 years as the Assistant Director of HopeWorks, a comprehensive sexual assault and domestic violence program in Columbia, MD. Now, Alexis dedicates herself to deepening practice and embodiment of liberation and transformation within communities she loves. Alexis was a Movement Maker in NoVo Foundation’s Move to End Violence Program and is enjoying her current evolution as the bass line of the jazz ensemble that is the Resonance Network staff team.

kassamira carter howard

Kassamira Carter Howard is the Program Manager of Resonance Network. Kassamira (she/her) is an artist, facilitator, healer, organizer, and advocate with a decade of experience in social justice movements. Using an intersectional framework, she explores ways to practice reimagining a world free from violence. Kassamira combines her creative art practice with her commitment to ending violence against black women and girls to create trauma-informed, survivor-centered healing spaces. Most recently, Kassamira served as the project manager for the “Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Reimagining Gender Anthology.” In collaboration with Wakanda Dream Lab and Resonance Network, the anthology explores the theme of gender liberation and encourages black folks from across the diaspora to practice imagining the liberated world we wish to create.In 2018, she developed the Youth LEADS initiative, a nationwide project to engage young people in honest discussions around their experiences with gender-based violence and solutions for creating change. She published the “Youth LEADS: Cultivating Young Leaders in the Fight to End Gender-Based Violence” report and has presented her work at several conferences, including the 68th annual United Nations Civil Society Conference and the National Conference on Domestic Violence. She graduated magna cum laude from Santa Clara University with a B.S. in Political Science, Ethnic Studies with a minor in Gender Studies.Ka

wil crary

Wil Crary, MSW (he/him/his) focuses on the connection between community conditions and mental health inequities. As a member of the Safety and Wellbeing team at the Prevention Institute, Wil provides guidance on implementing community-led strategies and measuring the impact of primary prevention. With extensive experience as an educator, writer, and researcher, he supports community partners involved in various collaborative projects coordinated by Prevention Institute. Before returning home to California, Wil lived in New Orleans where he contributed to food-based community-building projects from designing and implementing nutrition curriculum for underserved schools to coaching rural farmers toward collective marketing models. Although he spends most of his time analyzing structural barriers to health and strategizing ways to undo systems of oppression, some of his fondest memories involve direct service work facilitating bicycle repair workshops with young men, mentoring recent immigrants seeking employment, and teaching UC Berkeley undergraduates the foundations of critical sociology. Wil received a Master of Social Welfare degree from UC Berkeley as a Mack Graduate Fellow and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Spanish at Tulane University as a Posse Scholar.

ruben cantu

Ruben Cantu is an associate program director for community trauma, mental health, and violence prevention at the Prevention Institute. He has more than 20 years of nonprofit experience in public health, equity, program and organizational management, and technical assistance and capacity building. Most recently Associate Director at the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network (CPEHN), Ruben managed development, outreach, and communications initiatives to inform, mobilize, and advocate for the constituents of the state’s largest multicultural health policy organization. As CPEHN’s lead on mental and behavioral health, he authored the state’s draft strategic plan for reducing mental health disparities, a part of the California Reducing Disparities Project, funded through the Mental Health Services Act. Before his nine years at CPEHN, Ruben was Senior Specialist and Project Director at Mosaica: The Center for Nonprofit Development and Pluralism in Washington, DC, where he led activities funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of HIV/AIDS Policy and provided technical assistance to small and large community organizations across the country. He has held positions at the National Minority AIDS Council and Human Rights Campaign, also in Washington, D.C. A native Texan and graduate of the University of Houston, he serves on Regional Asthma Management and Prevention’s advisory committee and several state mental health advisory committees. He has worked extensively with organizations and community members fighting to advance health equity for the underserved.

Looking for more incredible prevention training?

Check out our YouTube channel for videos from January’s Sexual Violence Primary Prevention Summit to learn how to expand your lens to focus on the populations and strategies often overlooked in our prevention programs.

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