A trainer at Global Trauma Research Inc. and co-facilitator for Radical Social Workers Clinical Workgroup, she is helping people create a secure and maintainable lifestyle by means of education, counseling and spirituality in health.
Member of Adelphi University’s 10 Under 10.
Trainer at Global Trauma Research Inc. (GTR) and Co-Facilitator for Radical Social Workers Clinical Workgroup (RSWG-CG)
“Never settle for the idea that you are who you are; you are so much more, always stretch towards more.”“Honestly, it’s a well-known fact that I chose Adelphi because my favorite color is brown and I loved that it was the school color,” said Florie St. Aime, B.S.W. ’11, M.S.W. ’13. “I was also interested in going into a nursing program since most of my aunts and my mother were nurses and Adelphi had a well-respected nursing program. But what really made me choose Adelphi was the brown and gold! It was the only school I applied to; once I got in I did not bother sending in my other applications.”
“I had so many amazing women who mentored me during my time at Adelphi,” said St. Aime. “Professor Melanie Bush and Professor Deborah Little from the Sociology Department, Dean Della Hudson of Student Affairs, and Andrea Caliguri from the Alice Brown Early Learning Center. These women believed in me, more than I believed in myself. They were my confidence on days I had none, and that is a priceless gift.”
St. Aime graduated from Adelphi with the intention of being a community organizer or policy maker. “However, as I worked on my own personal growth, I read Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. I returned to be a member of Radical Social Workers Clinical Workgroup (RSWG-CG), I attended conferences around liberation-based healing and I reconnected with the idea of therapy as a healing tool. That is when my passion for mental health flourished as a means of change making,” said St. Aime who recently took on the co-facilitator position for RSWG-CG, where clinicians from all over New York City discuss how to advance their practices to align with anti-oppression and liberation based beliefs.
“I realized that helping people become their most authentic selves was what made the world change, not laws. In 2015, I finally took the licensure exam and got my license while working at The Family Center. I then transitioned to a clinical position. I joined Global Trauma Research Inc. (GTR) as an assistant trainer and I moved up to a trainer. I am currently on the implementation team creating new curriculum.” GTR is a non-profit organization with the mission to help support people around the world affected by psychological trauma. GTR hopes to help people create a secure and maintainable lifestyle by means of education, counseling, support, and integration of spirituality in health practices. “Currently, at Global Trauma Research Inc. (GTR), I see clients two days a week in the evening regularly, but the work that we are doing that is truly groundbreaking only happens once a year,” said. St. Aime. Every year, GTR facilitates mental health training in Haiti, the birth country of St. Aime’s parents. Volunteers, including St. Aime, travel to Haiti in December to help host a Christmas party for hundreds of school children in the area and to train community leaders and professionals in mental health facilitation. These professionals range in professions including doctors, nurses, teachers and religious leaders.
St. Aime has also been hard at work on another project. “My greatest accomplishment to date is a community I have been co-creating for over a year,” she said. “After the Pulse nightclub shooting last year, I was compelled to provide a space where people who identify within the LGBTQ community felt safer. My goal was to create a space that would combat isolation often experienced but rarely discussed within our community. I had access to the space in my agency and they have supported me in creating and sustaining the LGBTQ Dinner Series at The Family Center. It has been a year and we are still meeting monthly and growing. I am proud of this group because it is a microcosm of the communities I want to inhabit and co-create. Communities where people are encouraged to come as they are, offer what they can and take what they need all with care, compassion, and commitment to the community as a whole. It also is a tangible example of my best self. My best self will always take action, move with kindness to stop harm, prevent further harm, and help heal. The LGBTQ Dinner Series is the beginning of the work I hope to be doing for the next 10 years.”
About how Adelphi transformed her life, St. Aime said, “Prior to Adelphi, I was a regular volunteer, however, I did not think about becoming a world changer. I [realized I] was not a dot in a sea of uncontrollable circumstances; I can create what I need to create for myself and others. I learned that from my aforementioned mentors. I also learned that loving something means, challenging it. I challenged Adelphi while I was a student and continue to do so years later. I love Adelphi and aspire to see continued progress and evolution of not just a learning institution but a righteous community.”