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Alternatives to Violence Project/California (AVP/CA) Program

MISSION:

The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) is a multicultural 501(c)3 organization offering experiential workshops that empower individuals to lead peaceful lives through affirmation, respect for all, community building, cooperation, and trust. Our fundamental belief is that there is a power for peace and good in everyone, and that this power has the ability to transform violence. AVP builds on a spiritual base of respect and caring for self and others, working both in prisons and with groups in the community.

OVERVIEW

ASPECTS:

This statewide program has three primary aspects:

• - Workshops and support groups for prisoners in alternatives to violence, which have proven to decrease write-ups in the prison and reduce recidivism upon release;
• - Community workshops offered to all ages in conflict resolution, cooperation, and communication skills. Local councils of AVP facilitators create support groups that prisoners who have taken AVP inside can join upon release.
• - Training in team building and conflict resolution for staff at prisons and other institutions, thus providing the final link of community and prison transformation.

All aspects are facilitated by trained teams-are highly experiential, fun, and transform lives. Details of these three core aspects of AVP follow the description of Background.

BACKGROUND:

The Alternatives to Violence Project began in 1975. An inmate group at Green Haven Prison in New York was working with youth gangs and teenagers at risk, but they were having difficulty communicating their message about the consequences of violence. They sought help from the Quakers, who have a tradition of working on restorative justice, to create and conduct a workshop with them. Now in forty-four states and twenty-four other countries including Rwanda, this program has manuals for Basic, Advanced, Training for Facilitators, and Youth workshops

AVP/CA was established in June 2005, by a Steering Committee elected by trained California facilitators. This group is still the decision-making and mentoring body for workshops being established in prisons and communities in California. AVP/CA serves to establish independent, local groups.

Once a local community group is established, it becomes its own legal entity and becomes responsible for training and supervision of its facilitators. AVP/CA then moves into a support role connecting groups to one another.

All trainer/facilitators of AVP Workshops are trained in a series of three 18-20 hour workshops after which they apprentice for a minimum of three workshops prior to being certified as a facilitator. Evaluation of all facilitators occurs at the end of every workshop. Those facilitators who so wish may choose to be mentored toward being certified as a Lead facilitator of each level of workshop.

All workshops are facilitated by a team of facilitators. These facilitators are always volunteers when working with prisoners. Volunteers may opt to receive payment for their expenses. When working with staff, AVP/California pays these trained teams, which is the contractor for these services.

PRISON WORKSHOPS

Teams of community and prisoner volunteers trained in AVP offer workshops to twenty individuals on a regular (monthly) basis inside the walls of the prison to incarcerated men or women. In an ideal situation, these community volunteers come from the immediate community, but where that town is small and limited in available volunteers, they commute from nearby cities. All participants are volunteers, as well.

Research on AVP workshops has shown a 60% reduction in write-ups among prisoners who have taken a Basic workshop and a 50% reduction in recidivism three years after release.

The value of volunteers in working with prisoners is immeasurable. Repeatedly, the participants in the workshops are moved by the commitment of community people who come into the prison without pay and to dedicate time to offering the workshops. The volunteers’ devotion to the work appears to increase the allegiance to the program and its concepts of non-violence by the incarcerated.

The community of AVP'ers inside the prison helps prevent individual violence by supporting one another as they face daily challenges. We hear numerous stories of such help: one AVP graduate sang a song from the workshop and quelled a potential fight in the yard; others have reminded fellow graduates of their chosen affirming names and helped to lighten a potentially hostile situation; some have been empowered to step in to help calm a situation.

COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS

All AVP prison workshops are designed to function in collaboration with the local community for several reasons:

• Bringing together diverse groups for safer communities

In cooperation with local churches, service clubs, schools, colleges, community centers, parole offices, prison staff, African-American and Latino groups, other agencies, and inmate family groups, a wide range of people with racial, gender, social status and age disparity are enrolled in AVP workshops.

In communities where the prison is the main employer, the workplace stress brought into the community is sometimes reflected in the schools and other institutions by increased violence. By introducing these conflict resolution workshops and training local people to facilitate these workshops, AVP can ameliorate this impact.

Not only are skills introduced to all who attend an AVP workshop, but divergent parts of a community are given the opportunity to listen and learn about one another, thus creating a strong and more viable community overall.

• Developing community facilitators for workshops

These community workshops are designed to develop facilitators for the prison as well as for schools and other groups in the community. Again, anyone can be trained to be a facilitator. A fee is charged for the workshop, but scholarships are liberally obtainable. The money made from these workshops generally supports the ongoing work in the prison by the local group.