Echo Parenting & Education is excited to be the recipient of James Encinas’ Rider for Change fundraiser which will kick off at Le Grand High School in Merced County on April 11, 2014. Cycling from California to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Encinas intends to bring awareness to the need for trauma informed care and the understanding of how its implementation in youth service agencies and institutions can transform the health and social outcomes of communities. Encinas’ goal is to raise $100,000 in donations, all of which will go directly to Echo Parenting & Education, a nonprofit that envisions a world of nonviolence in which adults respect children by ensuring their right to physical and emotional safety.
Recently, Encinas participated in Echo Parenting & Education’s Changing the Paradigm conference where he was inspired by the organization’s founder Ruth Beaglehole’s question, “What action are you willing to take to make this world nonviolent?” Encinas, a Los Angeles Unified School District elementary school educator and Aspen Fellow, heard the call and responded by creating Rider for Change.
“I’m riding because we must demand that new policy measures focusing on providing trauma-informed care be introduced as a foundation for practice in all areas of social programming, especially for our children. I’m riding because today’s ‘corrective’ policy measures have had disastrous consequences. One example is in our schools. Punitive measures such as zero tolerance have increased dropout rates and given life to a destructive school-to-prison pipeline that is destroying our communities and our children.”
You can follow James Encinas’ journey on Facebook (Rider for Change)or on his blog at www.acesconnection.com
Donations can be made 3 ways:
1. online at www.echoparenting.org
2. sent to Echo Parenting & Education, P.O. Box 26938, Los Angeles 90026
3. Crowdrise
