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SRQ Strong

SRQ Strong is a growing group of Sarasota residents committed to promoting awareness about the causes of trauma, its effects, and help and healing after trauma. Sarasota Strong actively supports all efforts in the community to prevent and address trauma.

Our Name:  SRQ Strong

Our Mission: To promote community-wide trauma awareness through education, connection, and healing.

Our Vision: To create a community that cares for itself.

 

Monthly Community Forums

Our latest Community Forum (September 20, 2021), “We Need You Here: A Community Conversation on Suicide Prevention“, explored the topic of suicide and the healing that comes after listening and sharing our own experiences. To watch the full event go HERE or read about the event HERE.

To view and learn more about our past Monthly Community Forums, please visit the SRQ Strong Events page and scroll to the bottom to view Past Events.

Starting in January our Monthly Community Forums will have a new format.  The first meeting will be conducted via ZOOM on a selected topic.  The next month we will meet face-to-face to explore the previous month’s ZOOM topic.  This is an opportunity to discuss the topic in more depth and discuss possible solutions or actions that can be taken.  Stay tuned to discover our upcoming topics for the new year!

November’s community forum will be held via ZOOM.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS:
Monday, November 23 from 6pm-7:30pm to find out more go here!

REGISTER FOR THE EVENT HERE

For further information or questions please email [email protected] or visit www.srqstrong.org

Our Community Work Groups

Get involved with Sarasota Strong’s developing working groups, Healing, Education, Action, or Aging & Resiliency by emailing [email protected]

  • Healing – offering workshops on how to heal your own trauma and facilitate trauma healing in others, led by Helen Neal-Ali. NOW OFFERING MONTHLY VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS.
  • Education – spreading the message about trauma and healing.
  • Action – working to address systemic sources of trauma in our community, led by Andy Blanch.
  • Aging & Resilience – offering a space to explore trauma and resiliency experienced by older adults, let by Antoinette Johnson & Andrea Routh.

 

 

 

Trauma Leadership Core

Below is a picture of a youth team that was trained in assisting teens dealing with trauma.  They are now available to support young people in the community. To learn more about this initiative go HERE.

Sarasota Prisoner Outreach Project 

Mission: To connect and communicate with individuals in Florida prisons who are expected to return to Sarasota County at the end of their incarceration. To our knowledge, S-POP is the only group of its kind in the U.S.

Vision: To help ease the isolation, loneliness, and lack of self-worth that is endemic to the prison experience. S-POP connects with inmates in the following ways:

  • Pen pal relationships (set up to protect the identity and location of outside letter writers).
  • Sending S-POP generated newsletters on a variety of inmate-selected topics. The roster so far includes Nature, Florida Legislative Updates, Travel, Christianity, Yoga, Parenting in Prison, BLM, LGBTQ+, and Reentry. We hope to soon create content for Getting an Education in Prison and Starting Your Own Business.
  • Limited individual assistance, for example, S-POP was instrumental in helping to restore an inmate’s Veterans Administration disability checks that were accidentally discontinued.

We regularly get heartfelt expressions of gratitude for our efforts on their behalf. From Sammie P.:

“I cannot believe that a complete stranger would take even a minute of their time to help me, mostly everyone looks at us like we are animals. And the fact that this is coming from Sarasota, my home, just blows my mind. I cannot tell you enough how much your organization is helping me survive this ordeal.”

Anyone interested in learning how to get involved or to become a Community Partner should contact Olivia Weinberger, Director of S-POP, at [email protected].