FIRST AID ARTS’ VALUES
First Aid Arts is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit training organization, teaching psychoeducation and the arts for healing and resilience.
Our stated mission is to equip care providers with trauma-informed, arts-based tools and training. We focus on equipping lay care providers, who comprise the majority of trauma responders in communities with little access to formal education.
The heart of our mission target is to support the least served and most in need. We define need by the measurable categories of access to mental health resources, education, and sustainable income.
To support this mission, we are committed to living out the following values in our programs as well as our organizational culture. These values serve as governing principles for preserving and strengthening our focus on the mission of First Aid Arts.
FAITH
We all have faith because we all operate with a finite understanding of reality – atheists, monotheists, polytheists, and secularists all operate by faith and not certainty. At First Aid Arts, we humbly recognize that the fundamental beliefs forming the foundation of a person’s worldview greatly shape the way each person experiences life - including trauma and recovery from trauma. It is therefore essential to our mission that our team members honor the beliefs of the people we serve as well as other members of First Aid Arts. For this reason, we do not proselytize at our public trainings or include faith-based elements in our training materials. However, when Christian partners request theological resources as part of their training, we are happy to provide those. In order to maintain cultural and philosophical unity on our team, we hire according to our FAA Statement of Faith. Our Christian faith is the richest soil for our team’s careful development of both the Christian and faith-neutral materials FAA produces. A historical study of the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment reveals how the Christian worldview and Church were essential to the rise of modern science, and Christianity can now help preserve it from ideological influences that impede honest and rigorous scientific inquiry. Christianity also offers powerful theological and philosophical support in addressing topics such as evil, suffering and hope.
EVIDENCE-BASED
Our programs are founded on empirical science. We base our organizational understanding of trauma and our programmatic response on the falsifiable observations of biology, neuroscience, and physiology. Science is not science without objective observation. Academic theories that are not falsifiable or are rooted in socio-political doctrines are pseudoscience and are not included in our evidence base.
Our Christian understanding of a world ordered by an intelligent Creator is the foundation for our commitment to a science-based approach to health and healing. Secular and postmodern approaches to science are naive in their assumption that they do not impose a values system on scientific inquiry. There is no such thing as valueless fact, but all knowledge rests on a moral foundation laid by assumptions about the nature, meaning, and purpose of the universe. Good science knows its own scope. Science observes and does not make final explanatory claims or assertions about identity and meaning. These are the realms of theology and philosophy. When clinicians, scientists, and scientific institutions veer into these realms, we will take a dissenting position in order to stay appropriately within the scope of science.
TRAUMA-INFORMED
We follow SAMHSA’s trauma-informed principles to create safety and access for all. We interpret these principles using SAMHSA’s own guidelines and we reference this framework over guidelines developed by private organizations or individuals. Each of SAMHSA’s six principles is informed by the others. In accordance with SAMHSA’s guidelines, we contextualize these principles for our non-clinical programmatic work as well as within our team culture. We do not provide trauma care, trauma therapy, or counseling. Rather, we equip trainees with trauma-informed resources for their own self-care and the care of others.
ARTS-BASED
We are proud of our distinctive body-based approach to trauma training utilizing a multi-modal arts-based curriculum. While we do not provide therapy, we draw on the principles of art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy, drama therapy and other clinical disciplines to encourage holistic integration of the individual for increased resilience. The arts engage a person’s mind, body, and spirit, and are a universally practiced means of fostering social connection, all of which are crucial to trauma recovery.
SAFETY
We value physical and psychological safety for our trainees and in our organizational culture. A mutually understood definition of safety and adherence to communication practices that are psychologically safe are necessary for optimal team performance and the functional wellness of the organization.
GRATITUDE
We prioritize intentionally taking time to express appreciation for team members and community partners on a regular basis, as well as to express gratitude for the opportunity to be of service to others and to grow individually through the mission and work of First Aid Arts.
PROFESSIONALISM
We follow through on our commitments, communicate with directness and clarity, and strive for excellence in the preparation and execution of every aspect of our work, because the people we serve deserve our best. We maintain healthy boundaries between our personal and professional lives when in the workplace and while representing First Aid Arts.
COLLABORATION
Since our founding, we have practiced collaboration with advisors, among team members, and with partner organizations to develop and responsively adapt our programs to meet the particular needs of those we serve.
INDIVIDUALITY
Every person is unique. We all experience trauma differently and make meaning of events and circumstances based on numerous factors, including personality, beliefs, upbringing, values, and life experiences. We each require an individualized path to healing and resilience.
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Everyone is responsible for their own actions. We each have agency in cultivating the life, relationships, and world we desire. This commitment to personal responsibility is a strengths-based approach to trauma-informed work.
DIVERSITY AROUND THE TABLE
We define diversity in terms of skill, perspective, and life experience. We do not support the concept of monolithic identity groups nor do we assign moral value to any immutable character trait (gender, race, etc). Every team member enriches the work of First Aid Arts by bringing their unique skills, perspective, and life experience to the work.
UNITY
We are powerfully united by our commitment to our mission and values.
CREATIVITY
We recognize creativity as central to individual and organizational health in many ways, including in creative expression, problem solving, and communication.
BEAUTY MATTERS
Experiences of beauty can create hope, inspire connection, and nourish the spirit. Our internal culture and programs reflect not only scientific rigor and trauma-informed principles but a commitment to beautiful craft.
CULTURAL HUMILITY
We don’t make assumptions about individuals, people groups, or cultures. We invite others to interpret and contextualize the tools we offer for their optimal benefit. We don’t impose our cultural beliefs or preferences on others. We teach empirical observations about our universal biology and the universal nature of the arts for mitigating the effects of trauma. We remain agnostic to causes of trauma, meaning we do not attempt to diagnose, dismantle or in any way assess those causes. While representing First Aid Arts, team members do not engage in activism or advocacy related to specific causes of trauma. Our mission allows us to provide our tools universally while remaining culturally humble, because we do not stray outside the bounds of our empirical, trauma-informed scope.
INTEGRITY
Our organizational culture and programmatic offerings reflect our stated values as described in this document. While representing First Aid Arts, team members’ communication, actions, and demeanor should also reflect these values.
INTEGRATION
Trauma can dis-integrate our mind, body, spirit, and relationships. Our work is centrally about reintegration. Therefore, we approach trauma-informed training with a holistic understanding of how both trauma and the arts impact the individual and community.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BODY IN TRAUMA-INFORMED WORK
Our bodies matter to our health and resilience. We value mind-body awareness and mind-body integration. We ground this value of body-based trauma training in empirical research in neuroscience and neuroimaging, not in unfalsifiable theories.
First Aid Arts’ values are applied within our well-defined and limited scope:
Our job is to teach trauma-informed, non-clinical psychoeducation and arts-based tools for the care of self and others.
While we seek healing for all and strive to provide access to all, we are not an advocacy organization and do not advocate for any causes other than the mission of First Aid Arts.
We do not provide clinical care or therapy.
We do not promote particular political, religious, ideological, or non-empirical perspectives about trauma, healing, individuals, people groups, or cultures in our curriculum or at public trainings. However, when requested by our Christian partners, we do offer biblical, Christian resources at private trainings.
Because there is a dire need for scalable psychosocial resources usable by lay care providers, trauma-informed care is increasingly valued. Our distinctly neutral and universal model for supporting resilience can be easily and responsively adapted to specific cultural contexts. This approach remains only as effective as we remain committed to our values and operate within our limited scope.
A note from the First Aid Arts Board, October 25th, 2021:
Over the past year we have intentionally dedicated significant time and organizational energy to carefully examining our values in order to ensure our organizational culture and practices reflect our stated values with integrity and fidelity.
As of October 2021, we are exercising our right as an organization with faith-based bylaws to hire according to faith-based status. While this has always been an aspect of the DNA and foundation of our organization, we refrained from exercising our right to hire in this way because we wanted the diversity on our team that comes from vastly different worldviews, philosophies, and faiths.
However, as the fields in which we operate become increasingly, uncritically ideologically subverted by pseudo-scientific dialectical philosophies, we have found it necessary for the sake of organizational function and unity on the team to screen candidates according to their perception of reality – that is, that they hold to an empirical understanding of science and reject the notion that all knowledge is socially constructed, a disastrous and unfalsifiable concession that greatly weakens the aims and methodologies of trauma-informed mental health care.
Scientifically speaking, evidence that is acceptable for guiding approaches to trauma-informed work must be verifiable (and therefore falsifiable). “Evidence” that does not meet this criteria can lead away from accurate conclusions about the biology of trauma and the arts. If we want to be effective and truly helpful in addressing the impacts of trauma and the arts on human beings, we will avoid theories and ideologies that undermine honest scientific inquiry.
“In broadest terms, scientists seek a systematic organization of knowledge about the universe and its parts. This knowledge is based on explanatory principles whose verifiable consequences can be tested by independent observers. Science encompasses a large body of evidence collected by repeated observations and experiments. Although its goal is to approach true explanations as closely as possible, its investigators claim no final or permanent explanatory truths.”[1]
As academic institutions and licensing bodies within the field of mental health increasingly veer out of their lane into the metaphysical and philosophical realm of ontology, we are committed to assuming a position of dissent whenever necessary in order to provide truly safe, evidence-based educational resources to those we train in diverse communities across the planet. For this reason, we have determined that the only efficacious means for ensuring we stay true to our mission is to more explicitly embrace our faith-based Christian roots in our hiring practices. While faith-based language was included in our founding bylaws, we are now updating our hiring practices to include a faith-based component and communicating these new hiring practices to the public. This provides us with the necessary ideological boundaries to screen out pseudo-religious and dogmatic ideologues in our hiring process and allow for functional unity around our organizational values on the team.
The substance and aims of our programs will not change. We will continue to serve and partner with all organizations of good will and people of every culture, creed, and identity. In protecting our organization from ideologically motivated activism, we will be able to remain in our limited scope offering neutral, universal, evidence-based resources to our globally diverse partners.
Culture-shaping is a natural and necessary part of every organization, so we don’t consider this a unique or noteworthy facet of First Aid Arts’ hiring process. But we do want to be transparent with our advisors and stakeholders that we will be pursuing employees who share our Statement of Faith and our rigorously scientific understanding of evidence-based, trauma-informed care, as this shared understanding will be vital to maintaining the integrity and fidelity of our mission going forward.
To be clear, we are still going to serve the same people in the same way, and we will still partner with all individuals and organizations who are able to accept a definition of science as rooted in an observable and falsifiable evidence base. We look forward to scaling our impact through several ongoing and new partnerships doing careful work to measure and evaluate our programs internationally. As always, we are grateful to be of service in diverse communities across the globe. Our clarity regarding our organizational values allows us to continue to scale with accountability, rigor, and accessibility that make our offerings effective across varied contexts.
The First Aid Arts governing board expresses our deep gratitude to all of our partners and supporters.
Thank you for reading this update with care. We invite your engagement if you have anything you’d like to discuss. Please reach out by email to info@firstaidarts.org.
With gratitude and hope,
The First Aid Arts Governing Board
[1] National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. Responsible Science, Volume I: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press (1992): 38.