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Adverse Childhood Experiences

Documentary Film Screenings

Each documentary film screening will end with large group discussions about the film and how its contents can be connected to the local community. We will provide education on the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy’s various trainings to address ACEs, resilience, and healing.

Resilience: the Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope

"The child may not remember, but the body remembers".

Join the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy Prevention Team for a screening of Resilience: the Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope, a one-hour documentary that delves into the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the birth of a new movement to treat and prevent toxic stress. Now understood to be one of the leading causes of everything from heart disease and cancer to substance abuse and depression, extremely stressful experiences in childhood can alter brain development and have lifelong effects on health and behavior. Resilience also demonstrates ways to fight back, chronicling promising beginnings of a national movement to prevent childhood trauma, treat toxic stress, and greatly improve the health of future generations. As experts and practitioners profiled in Resilience are proving, what's predictable is preventable.

Resilience was produced by KPJR Films.


Paper Tigers

“Stressed brains can’t learn.”

That was the nugget of neuroscience that Jim Sporleder, principal of a high school riddled with violence, drugs and truancy, took away from an educational conference in 2010. Three years later, the number of fights at Lincoln Alternative High School had gone down by 75% and the graduation rate had increased five-fold. Paper Tigers is the story of how one school made such dramatic progress. Following six students over the course of a school year, we see Lincoln’s staff try a new approach to discipline: one based on understanding and treatment rather than judgment and suspension. Using a combination of vérité and revealing diary cam footage, Papers Tigers is a testament to what the latest developmental science is showing: that just one caring adult can help break the cycle of adversity in a young person’s life.

Paper Tigers was produced by KPJR Films.


Broken Places

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Broken Places explores why some children are severely damaged by early adversity while others are able to thrive. By revisiting some of the abused and neglected children we profiled decades ago, we're able to dramatically illustrate how early trauma shaped their lives as adults. Broken Places interweaves these longitudinal narratives with commentary from a few nationally renowned experts to help viewers better understand the devastating impact of childhood adversity as well as the inspiring characteristics of resilience.

Broken Places is written, produced, and directed by Roger Weisberg.

https://brokenplacesfilm.com/


Following each film we will present information on Connections Matter Georgia, our new initiative in partnership with Prevent Child Abuse (PCA) Georgia, designed to engage community members in building caring connections to improve resiliency, prevent childhood trauma, and understand how our interactions can mitigate the impact of ACEs.

Community leaders, decision-makers, law enforcement, juvenile justice staff, business leaders, church leaders, school administrators, teachers, parents, and anyone who works with children should participate in one of these screenings.

Access the Workshop for Individuals and Organizations:

Our Impact in 2022

  • Units of Service to Ensure Ongoing Safety & Well-being

    16, 793

  • Forensic Interviews

    671

  • Adults Trained

    11, 884

  • Hours of Therapy

    1, 620

  • DeKalb County
  • Fulton County
  • CACGA
  • DHS
  • National Children's Alliance
    National Children's Alliance
  • DOJ
    DOJ
  • SAMHSA
    SAMHSA
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