Innovation
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Trauma Informed Community Development is a framework that emerged as a result of the Orthodox Church and Hill District community members in Pittsburgh, PA taking on a grassroots exploration of community trauma.
This interest resulted from community based reflections on the amount of suffering in the community across many generations, and the visible impact it had on the life of the community. Significant partnerships would develop between the Orthodox Church, community members, and researchers and clinicians from Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh who took great interest in supporting a faith-based, grassroots, community-led effort to develop a response to community trauma.
Eventually these efforts culminated in a Consultative Workshop in April of 2014 during which community experts as well as relevant subject matter experts came together in an attempt to “problematize” the issue of community trauma with the intent to develop a community based response. Highly innovative and heavily informed by research and community experience, Trauma Informed Community Development is the framework which resulted from these efforts.