Join City Bureau and South Side Weekly for a special panel to discuss trauma-informed reporting. We’ve gathered three experts who can provide different perspectives and actionable advice on how to work with communities that have experienced trauma, with a focus on gun violence, state violence and gender violence. We’ll discuss how trauma affects people mentally, physically and emotionally, and the ethical limits of journalism in service of those populations.

Panel:

Hadia Zarzour is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Chicago. Hadia pursued her passion to work with Syrian refugees in Chicago and focus on their post-traumatic growth—their inner strength and resilience to adapt to a new culture. She is a co-founder of Insan, an international nonprofit organization providing psychosocial support to Syrian refugee children and adults in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey; and a co-founder of Syrian Community Network, a nonprofit organization that focuses on supporting Syrian refugees in their resettlement. She has recently been certified in Global Refugee Trauma from Harvard University.

Jennifer Smith Richards has been a data reporter at the Chicago Tribune since 2015. Smith Richards previously covered schools and education for more than a decade at newspapers in Huntington, W.Va.; Utica, N.Y.; Savannah, Ga.; and Columbus, Ohio. Her work has touched on everything from sexual abuse in schools to police accountability to school choice.

Trina Reynolds Tyler works on gender violence at the Invisible Institute and is a South Side native and currently a Masters in Public Policy candidate at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. A lot of her trauma-informed care experiences come from working with young people in Chicago. Whether through circle-keeping or facilitating classroom spaces, it’s important to her that young people are given the space to express themselves and talk about their experiences without being censored or sensationalized. In addition to working with young people, she worked with various media organizations as a fixer to put people in touch with community, while shutting down assumptions and expectations about what they were documenting.