The National Compadres Network (NCN) is a 501 c-3 nonprofit organization founded in 1988. Today built on over 30 years of service, NCN is a national voice for racial equity, racial healing, training, technical assistance, system change, and culture-infused efforts to create change that is transformational. It brings together culturally rooted, nationally recognized leaders in the fields of health,
trauma, healing, education, fatherhood, rites of passage, family violence, teen pregnancy prevention, cultural competence, juvenile justice, social services, advocacy, racial equity, and evidence-based research and evaluation. It works with community leaders and decision-makers to create strategic, sustainable systems of change and provides support in the areas of transformational trauma and healing-informed services, capacity-building and training, technical assistance, collective impact building, research, leadership development, and resource and material development. NCN provides technical expertise to system leaders who are looking for tangible ways to move from understanding and quantifying trauma and converting that knowledge to a pathway towards healing. NCN has a 33-year history of effective strategies in healing and mobilizing communities of color to overcome trauma and the despair they face. Our transformational healing, human development, and social change model are based on La Cultura Cura (Healing Culture); our indigenous-based philosophy, pedagogy, and delivery framework which is a pathway to social justice, community healing, restoration, and wellbeing. La Cultura Cura (LCC) represents lessons learned over 30 years of supporting the needs of individuals, families, organizations, communities, and systems seeking social justice, racial equity, and racial healing. NCN remains a national voice for racial equity, racial healing, training, technical assistance, system change, and culture-infused efforts to create change that is transformational. Women and Girls: Through a racial justice, culturally rooted, healing informed, and intergenerational framework, NCN effectively addresses women and girls’ trauma associated with systemic oppression when it comes to the health and economic opportunity of women and girls of color. NCN provides gender-responsive, culturally-based rites of passage process and philosophy that promote healing, resilience, and leadership capacity of Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous girls. Central to this approach is the importance of an intergenerational presence. Penned by NCN staff Debra Camarillo, the role of intergenerational presence within girls' work, an Indigenous perspective summarizes the need for an intergenerational perspective. Healthy adult role models expose girls to examples of how they can navigate life in a positive and encouraging way. Intergenerational presence allows a vision from different angles, experiences, and possibilities. For girls coming out of trauma, a healing environment is important. Adult women can offer hope and be nurturing while holding space for her and her healing. Girls with girls offer a positive opportunity for peer validation and support with healing, but it is the intergenerational women who offer guidance and vision on how to get there. It is also the adult women who give the girls a women’s trajectory albeit familial, historical, or cultural. In conclusion, for a girl's work to be successful, she needs to have all parts of her presence; her little girl self, her adult self, and her elder self, all of her!
