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Training resources

Live workshops and recorded trainings are available at no-cost for VSHSL-funded providers.

The Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy (VSHSL) supports VSHSL-funded providers and programs by offering core competency trainings. These trainings are meant to help providers attain and maintain key skills and concepts. Training topics are informed by responses to the annual narrative report. This resource is available to eligible providers at no cost. Some trainings have been recorded and are available to view online.

Upcoming trainings

Note:

  • Please register individually even if you plan to attend the training as a group.
  • Once you receive the Zoom login information, please do not forward it; all registrants will receive the login information.
  • Encourage staff in your organization to register for trainings early.

Five Steps Towards Stronger Cultural Competence

Trainer: Cross Cultural Health Care Program

Date: Thursday, February 26, 2026

Time: 1pm – 3pm

Description: This session provides skills necessary to navigate cross-cultural communication and arrive at mutual understanding and agreement across cultural differences. The training starts with a brief overview of the concepts of cultural competence and cultural humility, and their importance in delivering effective health and human services. Participants will learn steps, when practiced effectively, can interrupt cultural bumps/disconnects and move people toward greater understanding of each other’s perspectives and more culturally supportive outcomes.

In broad terms, the five steps:

  1. Awareness of self and one’s own culture and other(s) cultures
  2. Acknowledgment of and respect for cultural differences
  3. Honest validation of differences in cultural values, beliefs, and perspectives
  4. Negotiation towards a positive outcome for all based on shared goals
  5. Acting based on mutual agreement of the steps to take

Learning Objectives:

  • Gain the skills necessary to successfully navigate cross-cultural interactions, through applying the five steps of cultural competence
  • Strengthen the understanding that ongoing work on one’s cultural competency journey is a prerequisite for systemic change

Trainer bio: Paulina Bendaña currently serves a consultant to the Cross Cultural Health Care Program (CCHCP). CCHCP is a nonprofit organization that has been providing training and consulting services related to cultural competency, health equity, and language access for over 30 years. Paulina served as Director of CCHCP for over 5 years. She has developed and led several major training, consulting, and community projects with health care and human services organizations across the US to develop and implement cultural competency/equity & inclusion training programs and organizational assessments, enabling organizations to strengthen their policies and practices for staff, clients and community members. Paulina’s work in the nonprofit sector includes being the co-founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Honduras Conference, a network of organizations that undertake humanitarian programs in Honduras. Paulina has an M.A. in Economics from American University and a B.A. in Economics and Latin American Studies from Hampshire College. She is bilingual and also a trained medical interpreter.

Navigating Compassion Fatigue: A Nervous System Approach

Trainer: Michelle Perrier, LMHCA

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2026

Time: 2pm – 4pm

Description: This workshop provides a practical, trauma-informed introduction to compassion fatigue through a nervous system and body-based lens. Drawing from evidence-based approaches such as EMDR, somatic-based therapies, and parts work (IFS). The training explores how stress and emotional intensity affect helpers, how nervous system dysregulation and trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, shutdown) show up in everyday interactions, and how absorbing others’ stress can contribute to burnout, compassion fatigue, and boundary strain. 

Participants are introduced to regulation, grounding, and boundary-supporting tools through brief teaching, guided exercises, and demonstrations, with an emphasis on skills that can be used during work, between interactions, and at the end of the day to support presence and sustainability in helping roles.

Learning Objectives:

    Explain basic nervous system concepts, including the Window of Tolerance and common trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, shutdown)
    Recognize signs of nervous system dysregulation in themselves and others
    Understand burnout and compassion fatigue as nervous system responses
    Become familiar with practical somatic and EMDR strategies to navigate dysregulation (such as bilateral movement, resourcing, containment, grounding, breathwork, and pendulation)
    Increase awareness of internal reactions using parts-based (IFS-informed) concepts to support presence and regulation
    Apply mindfulness as moment-to-moment awareness during conversations and daily tasks
    Identify boundary and regulation strategies that support engagement without absorbing others’ distress

Trainer bio: Michelle Perrier, LMHCA, is a multicultural trauma and anxiety therapist in Washington and the owner of a private practice specializing in trauma-informed, somatic and EMDR care. With over 10 years of experience in digital marketing, she brings a unique interdisciplinary lens to clinical work, training, and community education. Identifying as biracial Korean American, Michelle’s lived experience informs her understanding of culture, identity, and the experience of navigating “in-between” worlds. Her work is rooted in the belief that healing is always possible and that individuals possess an innate capacity for resilience. Her work is guided by a mission to advance accessible mental health care across diverse communities.

Collective Trauma: How to Care for Yourself While Working with Oppressed/Targeted Communities

Trainer: Velazco Counseling PLLC, Dannia Velazco, LSWAIC

 

Date: Thursday, Apr 2, 2026

Time: 10am – 12pm 

Location:Virtual

Description:  What is collective trauma? And, how can we, as providers, take care of ourselves as we also experience social stress while working with oppressed/targeted communities? During this workshop attendees will have the opportunity to be guided in somatic experientials. This information is not just cognitive but somatic as well.

Trainer bio: Dannia Velazco, LSWAIC is a Latina and Somatic Psychotherapist in Seattle Washington. Her work is deeply focused on connecting back to the body. The focus of her work is trauma, working with folks that have experiences of being an immigrant, or come from immigrant families, attachment, and BIPOC mental health. She is dedicated to decolonizing mental health. 

Building Deep Listening Skills

Trainer: Cross Cultural Health Care Program/Paulina Bendaña

 

Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Time: 1pm – 3pm

Location:Virtual

Description:  Communication is at the root of an effective health and human services organization and successfully navigating cultural differences. This training helps to sharpen listening skills to enable truly listening to clients and improve understanding of their concerns and challenges so they can be involved in arriving at solutions and positive outcomes. 

Learning Objectives:
•    Learn about and practice various styles of listening to further develop one’s constructivist listening skills.
•    Understand what it feels like to speak authentically while being deeply heard.
•    Prepare for listening sessions or meetings with community members or other groups of stakeholders.

Trainer bio: Paulina Bendaña currently serves a consultant to the Cross Cultural Health Care Program (CCHCP). CCHCP is a nonprofit organization that has been providing training and consulting services related to cultural competency, health equity, and language access for over 30 years. Paulina served as Director of CCHCP for over 5 years. She has developed and led several major training, consulting, and community projects with health care and human services organizations across the US to develop and implement cultural competency/equity & inclusion training programs and organizational assessments, enabling organizations to strengthen their policies and practices for staff, clients and community members. Paulina’s work in the nonprofit sector includes being the co-founder and Executive Director of the Sustainable Honduras Conference, a network of organizations that undertake humanitarian programs in Honduras. Paulina has an M.A. in Economics from American University and a B.A. in Economics and Latin American Studies from Hampshire College. She is bilingual and also a trained medical interpreter

Resilience and Regulation in Work and Life

Trainer: Loryn Kezer, MSW LSWAIC

 

Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Time: 10am – 12pm

 

Location:Virtual

Description:  This two-hour workshop offers a practical introduction to how our bodies respond to stress and safety, and how these responses shape wellbeing, relationships, and effectiveness at work and at home. Using a trauma-informed approach grounded in neuroscience and human biology, the training helps participants understand what’s happening in the body during moments of overwhelm or shutdown, and how these patterns influence behavior, communication, and connection. The workshop explores how greater awareness of these responses can improve responsiveness with coworkers, the people we serve, and those in our personal lives. Participants will learn simple ways to notice and support their nervous systems in real time, helping foster steadier responses to stress, reduce burnout risk, and support overall wellbeing. 

Trainer bio: Loryn Kezer, MSW, LSWAIC, is a social worker and somatic psychotherapist with a background that includes bodywork, humanitarian aid, mental health, and hospice care. She began her professional path as a massage therapist, which shaped her understanding of the body as central to how people experience stress and healing. Her later work in international humanitarian settings and domestic social work has focused on supporting people navigating trauma and chronic stress, including the impacts of systemic inequity. Loryn brings this integrated perspective into her training work, offering clear, practical ways of understanding stress and supporting wellbeing, grounded in a compassionate understanding of the human experience.

Fiscal Compliance for Non-Profits Working with Community Grants

Trainer: Sunray Accounting Solutions/Sofia Olson

 

Date: Thursday, June 4, 2026

Time: 10am – 12pm

 

Location:Virtual

Description:  Do grant expenditure report requests leave you feeling lost?  You are not alone!  

Many non-profit accountants are being asked for detailed fiscal reports as they start to receive more robust grants.  Others have recently moved into non-profit accounting from for-profit accounting and may not fully understand the fund accounting complexities of non-profit accounting yet.  
This workshop will help you know if you are on the right track!

Luckily, it’s a specific set of skills and tools that you can master.  You can begin that journey toward mastery by learning the basics in this webinar.  

In this webinar, you will learn:
•    How to structure your accounting systems to track grants
•    How to review your grant spend downs so you know how much remains in each grant
•    How to allocate payroll and non-payroll expenses correctly across grants
•    How to allocate your joint overhead costs correctly to grants
•    How to provide a budget vs actuals for your funders
•    What a general ledger is and how to provide it to your funders

Trainer bio: Sofia Olson of Sunray Accounting Solutions is an empathetic, deliberate thinker with 20+ years of non-profit accounting experience, including 10+ years of setting up systems to track grant expenditures and supporting others to do the same. She says her superpowers are cleaning up messes; identifying what is needed in the present moment to get clearer, cleaner, more sustainable and dynamic systems to manage complex financial data; and creating and implementing those systems.
Sofia began learning accounting as the volunteer treasurer at the Seattle Young People’s Project in 2003, and then grew her skills in various roles, including my most recent as the Finance & Operations Manager at a local non-profit before launching her consulting business.

Previous trainings

Past trainings are recorded and available to watch on Vimeo.

Watch previous trainings

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