Trauma Training Curriculum

The primary goals of the training curriculum are outlined below:

• Enhance understanding: Ensure trainees grasp the underlying principles of trauma and its impact on individuals, communities, and themselves as credible messengers.

• Build trauma-informed skills: Equip trainees with practical tools and strategies to effectively recognize, respond to, and mitigate trauma in their interactions and interventions.

• Foster self-awareness and self-care: Promote self-reflection among trainees to recognize personal triggers and stressors and provide techniques for self-care and resilience-building to prevent burnout and vicarious trauma.

• Promote cultural awareness and humility: Increase awareness and understanding of cultural factors and diversity within communities to ensure interventions are respectful, relevant, and inclusive.

• Empower community-based organizations: Share recommendations on how organizations employing credible messengers can develop trauma-informed policies and procedures to address the impacts of trauma in this work, fostering a supportive and healing environment for staff and the community members they serve.

This Trauma Training Curriculum is meant to serve as a manual or guide for community-based organizations to train their staff on trauma, trauma-informed care, and topics often related to trauma in the context of credible messenger work. Rather than a standalone training, this curriculum provides core content considered essential for any training program on this topic.