The Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice/Healing Hurt People

Mission

The Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice promotes health equity and a racially just world. We provide hospital and community-based healing-centered interventions to survivors of violence, training for community health worker peers as a pipeline to sustaining careers as healers, and we expand our vision and reach through research and advocacy. Our ultimate goal is to inspire hope and healing in young people to prevent future violence and trauma, while transforming health and public health systems toward trauma informed, healing-centered, equitable, and racially just practices. Healing Hurt People (HHP) is a programmatic component of the center.

Guiding Principles of CNVSJ/HHP

• Trauma causes significant harm to the mind and body.
• Individuals who have experienced trauma are injured and in need of healing.
• Public health and related systems can help create a nonviolent and socially just society through trauma-informed policies and practices.
• Nonviolence is a powerful philosophy and strategy for social change that rejects all forms of violence.
• Social justice embodies the vision of a society that is equitable and in which all members are physically and psychologically safe.
• While the value of our work is universal, we are focused on helping individuals and communities in the City of Philadelphia

Healing Hurt People

Healing Hurt People (HHP) is a community-focused, hospital-based program designed to reduce re-injury, retaliation, and longstanding emotional disruption (PTSD and other stress symptoms) among individuals ages 8-35 in Philadelphia. HHP employs a trauma-informed approach, which takes into account the adversity that clients have experienced over their life course and recognizes that addressing this trauma is critical to breaking the cycle of violence.

Healing Hurt People participants are victims of intentional injury (not domestic violence, parental violence, or sexual violence) or witnesses to the same types of violence and have been treated for their injury at SCHC or seen in the community setting. We engage with young people ages 8-35 to address the needs—physical, emotional, and social—that occur after interpersonal violent injury.