All right, I will go. I also forgot to mention that I've been in Alberta for the last 10 years, and I'm also a therapist and community outreach coordinator and FNMI—first nations, Métis, and Inuit—specialist at my agency.
Obviously we know from what Jamie said and from what all the other speakers said that trauma is all-encompassing. It impacts every facet of life, which means that if it impacts us as individuals and impacts every facet of our lives, it also impacts the community in every facet and stratum. So we know that we have to address trauma. Our work is based on healing and addressing the healing process for individuals. We know that individuals heal in their own time and at their own pace, so it doesn't mean mandatory therapy sessions for individuals. It means creating an environment of therapy, an environment of community, an environment of identity. So when people are able and ready, in their own time, to come and seek support in their own ways, it is available to them.
We know that everybody heals in their own time and through their own measures. Not everybody needs to go to therapy. That's because everybody has different access to resiliency factors in their lives, and the more resiliency factors we promote in society and in communities, the more access to a higher level of health people will have later on in life.
We know that if we promote resiliency in communities—decrease vulnerability factors and increase resiliency factors—we're going to have healthier communities. Our agency, PACE, is really a grassroots organization that just promotes resiliency factors in communities. We don't focus on all the negative parts. We go into communities to see what's working. We get people to tell us what's working and we promote that, because that's their identity that's working. It's not something we've come in and created. Then we ask what's needed and how we can help, how we can help them identify more resources and services they haven't thought of and how we can help create this in their communities. When there's no funding, we find funding. We try to find ways to create therapeutic opportunities for people. It's more than just sitting one-on-one with somebody. It's sitting as a community, sitting individually, and sitting within our systems.
The study that Jacquie and Heather did also taught us that we really need to go in and engage communities. We can't just go in and tell people what they need. We ask communities what they need, what they think is not working, and what they think is working. I think that's one thing we forget, that we don't have the key to open every lock. Some people have their own keys that already work or don't work, and they just want support in how to recut a key, if we need to give that to them.
We also recognize that we need to have checks and balances within services, within all levels of community, with all representations from community. We can't put something in place and then leave the community to run with it. We should have community advisory committees as was mentioned earlier by some of the other speakers. Those things really need to be in place, and this qualitative study identified that need.
One other thing we recognize is the need to engage and support community leaders and natural helpers within communities. As professionals, we try to encourage people to be 100% healthy, regardless of their mental health level. But we know that healing is a process that starts at some level and that every community has natural helpers. Sometimes they're not in leadership. Sometimes it's one of the moms who lives on the street or one of the males who has just come forward about his own experience of sexual abuse. We need to take those natural healers, those natural helpers, and the leadership within the community, those who have some form of health, and promote and support them, so they can give services within their communities.
One thing we're very proud of as an organization is that we go into communities and find helpers and find out how to support them in making their communities healthier. Sometimes it's just going in and teaching paraprofessionals how to do crisis intervention, or teaching community leaders who are natural helpers how to run groups and facilitate different programs within their communities. It's not always rocket science.
We don't say we're the experts and we need to come in and do this. We can tell them how to do it, to run with it, and to call us when they need help. We'll be more than willing to come back and help. We'd love to give that opportunity.
With that is about breaking down the barriers of isolation and no relationships. We know that relationships and connections are the biggest healers of trauma. Regardless of talking about your trauma, having a relationship with someone who can empathize with your trauma is one of the biggest realities of healing and of healing shame. So breaking down that isolation and building honest relationships are important.
We know that historically relationships have been broken down and slandered and hurt. Coming in and building an honest relationship is very important in addressing resiliency, because connection is one of the biggest birthplaces of healing shame. We want to promote healing shame. We want to create a medium, a space of healing, and that starts with a relationship, whether or not it's with the most qualified professional with the biggest degrees behind them.
What else do I need to cover here?