In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the NBCC Foundation made the difficult decision to move their annual Bridging the Gap Symposium to an online platform for the safety and well-being of attendees, staff, and presenters. Providing learning opportunities that explore diversity and discuss how to best address the needs of underserved communities is always at the forefront of planning for Symposium sessions. This move has allowed the team to think of new and innovative ways to bring learning to counselors all over the country.

The 2020 Bridging the Gap Digital Experience will take place June 16–19, 2020. The theme for the event is “Family Matters,” with an emphasis on counseling skills, research, and resources that can improve, strengthen, or enrich families that represent minority and other underserved communities.

In this year’s first keynote address, Can’t Heal What You Don’t Reveal, Rwenshaun Miller, MA, NCC, LCMHC, will address the concerns of mental health for Black people by challenging stereotypes and the stigma associated with mental illness while exploring the role of Black social systems and intergenerational trauma as related to mental health challenges in minority communities. During the second keynote address, The Cost of Making It: The Intersection of Success and Survival, Dr. Ajita Robinson, NCC, LCPC, will highlight the unique and unshared challenges that first-generation trauma survivors and first-generation poverty disruptors often encounter on their journey “of making it.”

Registration closes at 11:59 EDT on June 14, 2020. You can register and view the agenda with full descriptions online. Some sessions of note are:

Topics related to Black communities and people of color:

• Black to the Future: Exploring Historical Issues Impacting Modern Black Families
• Developing Cultural Humility Within Societal Institutions: Integrating Cultural Humility, Advocacy, and Social Justice to Address Mental Health Disparities Among Underserved Populations
• How Counselors Foster Resilience, Opportunity, and Academic Success for Minority Children and Families Through Equity-Focused School–Family–Community Partnerships
• The Intersectionality of Social Class and Mental Illnesses
• Incarceration Is a Family Affair: Effects of Incarceration on Families
• Down Through the Years and Still Through the Tears: Race-Based, Historical, and Intergenerational Trauma

Topics related to the LGBTQ+ community:

• Sex Positivity as a Multicultural Competency: Supportive Therapeutic Interventions for Families With Affective- and Gender-Diverse Youth
• The Start of the Rainbow: Counseling Racial Minority Couples Within the LGBTQ Community
• Empowering Trans* Youth in Schools: Affirming Approaches for Families, Teachers, and Counselors
• Queerly Constructed Kin: Families of Choice and Implications for Counseling Gender and Sexual Minorities
• Counseling Parents of LGBTQ Individuals Using Narrative Therapy

Topics related to Latinx or AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) populations:

• “No Estoy Loco!”: Navigating Mental Health Stigma and Negative Perceptions When Working With the Latino Population
• Immigrants Are Here to Stay!: Strategies for Serving Immigrant, Refugee, and Undocumented Families in Our Current Sociopolitical Climate
• Check Their Privilege: Counseling South Asian Families Through the Lens of Power Structure Existent in South Asian Cultures