Urban Triage will host its 3rd Annual Kickback event at Penn Park on Saturday, July 22, 2-8 pm. The day’s theme of “Field Day” will be around sporting activities and competitions for prizes, ideal for a nice summer day.
Earlier this summer, a collaboration between Urban Triage and the Youth Action Board (YAB) and other partners saw the opening of a Youth Drop-in Center at 306 E. Wilson St. in downtown Madison. Kayla Every, youth homelessness demonstration program coordinator with YAB, and Brandi Grayson, CEO and founder of Urban Triage, were at the opening at both organizations and will work closely with the Drop-in Center.
Grayson spoke on how Urban Triage came to this collective effort and how important this space is for sharing resources and positive programming for young people.
“Urban Triage was chosen to support and develop the Youth Drop-in Center, as well as transitional housing, and rapid rehousing. We’ll end up having all our focus on youth between the ages of 17-and-a-half to 24. I know some people might say, ‘Well that’s not youth, those are grown people.’ What we find with the numbers is that that age group is the most vulnerable,” Grayson told Madison365, suggesting that targeting this age group with the right programming can have large impacts on mentalities carried into adulthood. 
“Because there’s no resources or programs that actually target that age group, when people age out of foster care or age out of systems, oftentimes when they hit 18, specifically for youth known as Black, they can face being put out of their home [and] expected to transition into adulthood quickly.”
This type of programming done by Urban Triage uses Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, a theory by Dr. Joy DeGruy that details how generational histories of trauma and continued lack of access and opportunity can lead to negative self-beliefs and actions. What Grayson says it really comes down to is getting people to see better options for themselves through the work.
“What kind of scripts are you living by that have you actively or not actively, directly or indirectly contributing to your reality?” Grayson questioned. “Our job and how I see our role as an organization is really to support youth and others in removing those scripts … removing the narrative that’s programmed in us. That’s why we use the framework of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. The book comes with a workbook and different activities to help us identify how we show up.”
While Urban Triage has had the most success in providing support around housing needs, Grayson spoke to how numbers in other areas are much harder to represent. With most of the programming being based on changing mindsets and engaging people’s progress as a process, the immediate results are more visible on the ground than looking at the overhead.
“We have been able to take the most complex theories and ideas and put them in digestible formats for all age groups,” said Grayson. “It’s been really exciting to see the ‘A-ha’ moments, the light bulbs. The challenge with being a nonprofit is that funders and grantors and investors want to quantify that seed that we’re planting. They want to quantify those lightbulb moments and the moments of self-discovery. It’s really hard to do that, because the seed that you plant in someone at the age of 17, may not flourish until they’re 28.”
Work that can change lives does not always happen quickly, but results in continued community engagement show that one thing is for certain, the people who need the services know where to go to receive them.
“Once we reintroduce these ideas of meditation, getting into your body and identifying what you’re feeling, expanding your awareness across areas, and building your capacity, people remember,” Grayson says. “How they say we carry trauma, we also carry the memories of how we used to take care of ourselves and things. I feel like that has been amazing. We do yoga, we teach people how to reflect, we do shadow work as part of our activities and integrated family systems.”
Getting involved with Urban Triage can be easy, too, with their upcoming Annual Kickback on July 22, a free event at Penn Park, 2101 Fisher St. More on the event can be found here along with information on how individuals and organizations can get involved as sponsors as Urban Triage looks to provide more accessible opportunities for the community.
Grayson said that continued efforts toward sustainability and expanding across programs are now the focus, and community support drives those initiatives. With support initially coming in large amounts from city contracts, the cost of providing assistance along with attempts to pivot and expand services calls for continued investment into the impact of Urban Triage.
“Our main area is going to remain housing. That’s what we do and we do it really well. Even though we’re three years in, we killed the game with our program,” Grayson said of their efforts at emergency housing support and work towards providing more permanent housing support.
“Next year, MMSD will bus their kids to our Drop-in Center, and we’ll provide that curriculum and wraparound support. Our focus is youth housing and youth development because the big things missing are youth resources, mental wellness, and emotional support. We believe in psychotherapy, and we believe in somatic work. The next one is to expand our agriculture, so those are three buckets.”
With exciting work across multiple areas, it is definitely worth checking out what Urban Triage may have going on near you. To learn more check out their website.
