United with Uvalde

This project proposes a multifaceted collaboration with the Uvalde, TX health clinic, Community Health Development Inc (CHDI), in the wake of the tragic mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. The goal is to lay the groundwork for a sustainable community-driven trauma healing and resilience-building coalition. The project will provide the staff of CHDI, serving 2/3 of Uvalde, UCISD teachers/counselors and community leaders, with a firm grounding in healing skills based on contemplative wisdom practices, a network of mentorship, sustainability efforts such as fundraising and contemplative workshops, as well as facilitated intimate peer support practice groups enabling participants to better deal with extreme stress, loss, and trauma. This approach moves at the pace of guidance and is informed by the Center for Mind Body Medicine’s evidence-based model for addressing collective trauma. The project will directly lift the Mind and Life Institute’s mission by supporting a community that has become highly divided, politicized, and traumatized in coming together to better understand themselves and their challenges through community-driven contemplative care.