Create Global Healing
Celebrating Our 16th Anniversary
Opening hearts, healing our children, healing our world
DonateRegistered 501(c)3 charity 26-1459322.
100% of your donations support our field work.
Inspiration
Inspired by her work with orphan genocide survivors in Rwanda, Dr. Lori Leyden founded the non-profit, Create Global Healing in 2007 to support traumatized young people around the world to heal, work and lead us into a peaceful future. Since that time, Lori and her team have brought comfort, peace and hope to thousands around the world from Rwanda to Australian Indigenous and Refugee communities and post school shooting communities in Newtown, CT, and Parkland, FL. Create Global Healing also provides online Trauma Relief and Resiliency Training and Consulting Services for individuals and groups serving traumatized communities around the world. Click here for more of Lori’s inspiration story.
Vision
The future of our world lies in the hands of our children – our next generation of leaders. We believe that:
- How we handle traumatic events matters.
- Everyone is entitled to live a life with dignity, peace and hope and that the promise for peace in our world lies in nurturing our children to become global citizens and heart-centered leaders.
- Global healing will take place through compassionate, heart-centered healing experiences fostering the understanding that we are all connected as global citizens desiring the same things – to love and be loved, to live a meaningful life and to have a bright, peaceful future.
- The resiliency of the human heart are our greatest human gifts and have the power to unite us all.
Create Global Healing Projects
Project LIGHT Rwanda: The Worlds First International Youth Healing Program
After several years of working in Rwanda, Dr. Leyden realized that trauma healing wasn’t enough to nurture resilient young people so she developed Project LIGHT: Rwanda – the world’s first international youth healing, heart-centered leadership and economic sustainability program. In 2011, with the help of grassroots donors and Nick Ortner, founder of The Tapping Solution, Project LIGHT: Rwanda became a reality. Twelve Project LIGHT Ambassadors completed a 4-week residential training program and with continued support from middle school children to adults are being sponsored for university and entrepreneurial activities. If survivors of one of the most horrific tragedies in the world can forgive, heal and reconcile then there is hope for all of us to do the same.
Collaborations
Project LIGHT: Rwanda Trainings
Since 2007, our trainings have impacted hundreds and hundreds of Rwandans across the country. In 2016 we made 4 train-the-trainer trips to Rwanda to scale our Project LIGHT train-the-trainer model with African Peace Partners, a group of Conflict Transformation Mediators, Never Again Rwanda, the largest peace building organization in Rwanda and Rwanda Correctional Services Social Workers from 13 of the 14 prisons in the country housing over 54,000 inmates. Click HERE to view our award winning documentary.
The Tapping Solution Foundation: The First USA Community-Based EFT for Trauma Healing Program
On December 14, 2012 one of the worst school shootings took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. 28 people were killed including 20 six-year-old children. Nick Ortner of The Tapping Solution, a resident of Newtown, reached out to Dr. Leyden. Within days, Dr. Leyden was on the ground heading up Mr. Ortner’s Foundation. For the next three years, Dr. Leyden established and managed a community-based trauma healing model serving those affected by the tragedy. Just two months later, Project LIGHT: Rwanda Ambassadors were reaching out to a 12-year-old Newtown boy who had lost his brother in the shooting. Our documentary tells the story of what is possible when our traumatized young people in the world are able to connect and heal. Click HERE to view our award-winning documentary.
Mind Heart Connect Foundation: Creating Resilient Communities
Dr. Leyden has been collaborating with Kate Helder and Dr. Peta Stapleton of the Mind Heart Connect Foundation since 2016. The goal of the foundation is to create heart-centered and resilient communities where people have the resources, skills and tools to cope with trauma and adversity and participate fully in life: communities where people are thriving not just surviving. Our focus is using Clinical EFT to address the impact of immediate and inter-generational trauma in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and refugee communities. Specifically, we offer EFT trainings supporting trauma relief and resiliency skills for care-givers and service providers in these communities.
Parkland, FL: Disaster Relief and Recovery Program
On February 18, 2018 a shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL took the lives of 17 people and injured 17 others. Dr. Leyden was invited to collaborate with Children’s Services Council of Broward County to train mental health professionals serving the many communities affected by this tragedy. Over a two-year period, Dr. Leyden trained over 240 clinicians in the use of EFT for Trauma. EFT is now being used in schools and mental health agencies recognize the effectiveness. Dr. Leyden continues to provide mentoring services to Broward Country mental health professionals.
Project LIGHT: Children 2 Children Clubs - Fostering Global Citizenship
Established in 2008 by educator, Moira Mahr and Pacific Grove Middle School, Pacific Grove, CA to support the Remera Mbogo Residential High School in Rwanda – home to 650 orphans. These clubs are created to provide students with heart-centered opportunities to experience being service-minded and to create connections with other children around the world. Our programs emphasize that service is about giving and receiving. When students care about other children around the world and show that caring through giving of themselves, they receive the many benefits of improved self-esteem, a sense of accomplishment, the knowing that they have made a difference in someone’s life who has suffered great trauma and tragedy, increased creativity and sense of fulfillment as they collaborate on co-creating meaningful ways of giving. In turn, our orphans experience the hope and dignity of being seen and heard, of being loved and cared for, knowing that they matter and that a bright future is possible.
Our Moment Of Choice
A book inviting YOU to awaken to healing your heart and the heart of humanity.
Our Moment of Choice Is At Hand
There has never been a more urgent time for us to collectively choose to hold the greatest vision of what we can be and do together, to lead with our hearts and co-create new possibilities that will offer us hope for our future.
Our Moment of Choice is an anthology with contributions from 43 evolutionary leaders including Greg Braden, Deepak Chopra, Bruce Lipton, Jean Houston, and miraculously, me! It is a rousing call-to-action for all of us to help transform the world into a just, peaceful, and thriving one—featuring creative and practical solutions to the many crises facing humanity today.
"Our Moment of Choice” is a proud winner of the 2020 Gold Nautilus Award in the category of Rising to the Moment 2020, the 2021 New York Book Festival in the category of Compilations/Anthologies, a 2021 COVR Silver Visionary Award, and a Gold Living Now Book Award in the category of Social Activism/Charity.
Get your copy of the book HERE.
Watch the trailer
WHEN I WAS YOUNG I SAID I WOULD BE HAPPY is a feature length documentary about the transformation achieved by 12 orphan genocide survivors in Rwanda after participating in a new form of sustainable humanitarian aid called Project LIGHT. Using a train the trainer model, these young people called Ambassadors, were trained to heal their Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and their hearts as well as teach others to do the same. In only two short years they paid forward their healing to hundreds, from Rwanda to Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Watch The Full Movie
