Leadership Development
Healing to Action promotes the individual and collective transformation of survivors through an eight week leadership program that builds relationships between survivors, facilitates their collective healing from trauma, and provides training so survivors can organize against structural barriers that perpetuate gender-based violence.
"You cannot find another place in the world that is centering healing like Healing to Action." ~ Rosario Guillen, 2018 Healing Generations Cohort
Healing Generations
Survivors who attend the eight-week program develop:
Healing and relationship-building skills
Political education about the origins and root causes of gender-based violence.
Skills to combat gender-based violence in participants' communities
Organizing and advocacy training
" I am now equipped to help someone going through violence. I feel confident handling these difficult situations.” ~ Alex Velasquez Brightbill, 2020 Healing Generations Cohort
A critical part of our program is arts healing, working with community-embedded artists and activists to process trauma, express our creativity, and claim our stories.
Sanación De Generaciones: Esperanza Del Mañana
On March 15, 2019 HTA survivor leaders, launched a public exhibit titled,"Sanación De Generaciones: Esperanza Del Mañana,” to present their individual and collective journeys they’ve embarked on to dismantle systems that perpetuate gender-based violence.
In collaboration with Awakenings, a multi-media art gallery that makes visible the artistic expressions of rape and sexual abuse survivors, HTA launched the exhibit featuring seven HTA survivor-leaders who explored ofrendas as the artistic expression of hope, home, personal stories, and their personal truths that are often silenced across generations, cultures, and gender lines. Local Pilsen artist and educator Antonio Ancona facilitated the creation of this exhibit.
“…I would recommend the program. I always try to learn as much as I can and learn from other people because we all come from different cultures and I love to learn from other people and I love the empathy I receive from the program. I would also say that this group is a great group to have support." ~ Margarita Alcala, 2020 Healing Generations Cohort
Sustaining Survivor Leadership
We eliminate structural barriers to survivor leadership by centering the multiple identities that our leaders bring to our work as parents, workers, caregivers, and survivors of trauma.
In all our programmatic work, we provide accommodations such as free childcare, crisis support, transportation assistance, and interpretation. We’ve also developed a monetary benefit structure to ensure survivor-leaders’ time and effort is recognized and uplifted.
