ACE Overcomers named Central Valley Opportunity Fund GRANTEE
in collaboration with UC MERCED & MERCED MISSION
PRESS RELEASE
Central Valley Opportunity Fund Grantee
Merced County Navigation Center
Shelter is a basic need for everyone, and it’s the foundation from which families and individuals can begin to build, or rebuild, their potential to live self-sufficiently.
Merced County Navigation Center focuses on housing in all capacities, from ending homelessness to locating and maintaining stable housing for shelter guests. Merced County Navigation Center continues their effort to end and prevent homelessness while providing quality education and opportunities for growth assist guests and clients with the challenges they face.
To maintain stable housing, life skills such as time management, financial planning and workforce development are helpful, not only to assist managing one’s own place, but maintaining it once it is secured. Not only will an increase in life skills better an individual, but it will assist him or her in an improved quality of life in areas such as wage gains, job opportunities and even health. However, the traumatic stress from being homeless interferes with one’s ability to cope effectively.
Traumatic stress occurs when an individual experiences an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that are so physically or emotionally challenging, harmful, or threatening that they overwhelm the available internal and/or external resources and interfere with ability to cope effectively. Traumatic stress is of particular concern for individuals experiencing homelessness, where trauma may result from past events in childhood, events leading up to becoming homeless, and/or events that occur during a period of being without permanent shelter.
There is hope – ACE Overcomers has developed an evidence-based curriculum that addresses ACEs, trauma, and toxic stress that will provide the much-needed coping skills to individuals experiencing homelessness.
Jennifer Carr, the Director of the Merced County Navigation Center shares, “The Merced County Navigation Center is excited to be partnering with Ace Overcomers and UC Merced. They will be providing our shelter participants the opportunity to engage in a Building Healthy Life Skills class. We look forward to seeing the positive outcomes.”
UC Merced
To uphold the highest level of integrity in program delivery and efficacy, ACE Overcomers will partner with UC Merced’s Translational Research Center, to conduct pre and post assessments to determine the effectiveness of the ACE Overcomers Program. They will develop and utilize recognized standardize psychological measurements to demonstrate overall impact to participants’ emotion management skills, communication skills, psychological well-being, health, and quality of life as well as overall community awareness of adverse childhood experiences.
“The ACE Overcomers Program is based on sound psychological principles and research.” Linda D. Cameron, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Psychological Sciences University of California, Merced.
Central Valley Opportunity Fund
Dave Lockridge, Founder and CEO of ACE Overcomers, states “We are excited to collaborate with UC Merced and the Merced County Navigation Center to address the psycho/social needs of individuals experiencing homelessness. None of this would be possible, if not for the funding provided by the Central Valley Opportunity Fund – we are grateful and thank you!”
The Central Valley Opportunity Fund (CVOF) is a private, donor-advised fund dedicated to improving the lives of residents of the greater Merced community. Founded in 2017 by philanthropic investors with a passion for Merced, CVOF is administered by the Central Valley Community Foundation (CVCF). Prioritizing three main focus areas – Youth Development, Economic & Workforce Development, and Housing & Homelessness – CVOF seeks to utilize the power of collective impact philanthropy by serving as a catalyst to draw in additional public and private resources, and establishing regional partnerships to pursue strategic, research-driven investments aimed at equitable, lasting, and systemic change.
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