This holiday season, READI Chicago community partners and supporters came together to ensure READI participants and their families were able to celebrate and give thanks over a traditional home-cooked Thanksgiving meal.

Catered by Design, a Chicagoland catering company celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year, donated dozens of individual and family-style prepared meals to READI participants on the day before Thanksgiving. Reflecting on a successful business year and the isolation many felt last year celebrating the holidays amid COVID-19, Thomas Schabow, director of marketing for Catered by Design, said it was important for the company to find a way to give back this year.

“People tend to really focus on giving to families around the holidays, and it seems like individuals and single adults are often overlooked around this time,” Thomas said. “That’s why I wanted to make sure our donations went to individuals as well, to make this year a little brighter for everyone.”

The Zakat Foundation, an Englewood community partner, also donated supplies to give participants the opportunity to cook their own Thanksgiving meal. In the days before the holiday, participants received turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and more—everything needed to give thanks with families and loved ones this season.

Earlier this month, READI Senior Director Eddie Bocanegra joined Gov. J.B. Pritzker as he deemed gun violence a public health crisis and committed $250 million over three years to help programs like READI Chicago reduce shootings and homicides.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and other elected officials joined Pritzker for the announcement. In addition to the Executive Order, he also announced Illinois’ new Office of Firearm Violence Prevention.

“Gun violence is devastating communities, neighborhoods, blocks, and families,” Pritzker said during the announcement. “Mothers, fathers, brothers, friends are experiencing senseless tragedies in the deaths and serious injuries of their loved ones.”

Over the past year, Eddie and READI have worked extensively with various levels of local and national government to prioritize and adequately support gun violence interventions. Eddie called the increased focus on city, county, and state collaboration a win for the field, also emphasizing the focus of the new office on systemic causes of gun violence.

“We know that the link between poverty, violence, and trauma is a cycle and can be traced back to systemic causes,” Eddie said. “This new collaboration and step toward adequately supporting community safety initiatives makes me hopeful that we can create real change moving into the new year.”

This month, the National Institutes of Health awarded a grant to pilot a new program designed to help READI staff and participants continue to build resiliency and transform difficult experiences into positive change.

Through this grant, Professor Judith Moskowitz of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine will develop and test pilot the FOREST (Fostering Optimal Regulation of Emotion to prevent Secondary Trauma) program. Moskowitz worked with READI front-line staff to practice positive emotion skill-building, which incorporated staff feedback that better tailors FOREST to support people in communities with high levels of exposure to racial injustice, gun violence, and other forms of trauma.

“We’ve found that rates of stress and burnout are very high in front-line violence prevention workers,” Moskowitz said. “In order to do their jobs, they need support for coping with stress. As opposed to other programs I’ve worked on, this is very much READI staff telling us what they need and helping us see ways that our science can have more impact.”

Based on the established link between stress, negative emotions, and physical health, FOREST will build on Moskowitz’s previous work developing front-line READI staff as Positive Emotion Ambassadors (PEAs). This cohort of staff trained in positive emotion skills bring these skills to the READI program for the long-term.

Earlier this month, Sen. Dick Durbin visited READI Chicago to announce new funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support gun violence prevention research, including for READI.

A staunch supporter of evidence-based programming and a regular visitor to READI, Durbin advocated for the inclusion of $25 million to support gun violence research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NIH.

“The one thing I’ve learned through my life is the power of redemption, and READI is a nationally recognized effort doing just that,” Durbin said. “Despite experiences that would have devastated anyone, [these staff and participants] have turned those experiences into positive changes in their lives and the lives of others.”

A portion of the newly announced NIH funding will go to Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine to develop and test pilot the FOREST program, which is intended to help READI staff and participants continue to build resiliency and transform difficult experiences into positive change. The FOREST program principles will help front-line READI staff learn and practice skills to help reduce the impact of firsthand and vicarious trauma.

“Too often, we celebrate resiliency without capturing the journey from the starting point through the end,” said READI Senior Director Eddie Bocanegra, who joined Durbin at the announcement. “Progress is not linear, and for the first time we have an administration acknowledging that our men are worthy of investment. This is an opportunity to make sure our whole country, and not just Chicago, benefits from what we’re learning through READI.”