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THE AVP MISSION

The Alternatives to Violence Project is a multi-cultural volunteer organization that is dedicated to reducing interpersonal violence in our society.

AVP workshops present conflict management skills that can enable individuals to build successful interpersonal interactions, gain insights into themselves, and find new and positive approaches to their lives.

The AVP program offers experiential workshops that empower people to lead nonviolent lives through affirmation, respect for all, community building, cooperation and trust.

THE AVP MODEL

We Learn by Experience

The AVP program teaches through experiential learning with a minimum of lecture. The AVP workshops consist of a series of structured experiences, or exercises. Intellectual knowledge is generally not very helpful in the midst of conflict but repeating nonviolent behavior that has been previously practiced is helpful. Role plays are a key focus of AVP workshops. They help participants discover new ways of dealing with conflict nonviolently, and it gives them an opportunity to practice new behavior.

The Best Way to Kill the Program is to Require People to Attend It

A fundamental requirement is voluntary participation in the program on both an individual and an institutional level. When the program is required or imposed by others, it is probably doomed to failure. Our workshops are about personal growth, and people can only grow when they choose to do so themselves. All our workshop leaders are volunteers, and we expect all our participants to be volunteers also.

The Process Works by Itself

Over a period of years, AVP has evolved a structure, a process, and a set of exercises for workshops that really work. If the leaders stick to the process, the process will work with good leadership and with ordinary leadership. It has been said that any organization can prosper with great and charismatic leadership, but only a great organization can prosper with ordinary leadership. AVP seeks to develop great leaders, but it is not dependent upon them.

The Way for the Program to Grow is to Train New Leaders

Much of AVP’s growth and success is the result of empowering people and training them to be leaders. We believe that anyone who really wants to be a leader can learn to be one. We do not have “star” trainers. We have a team leadership model which discourages “stars”. We insist that no one conduct an AVP workshop alone, not only because such leadership encourages “stardom”, but also because it fails to model the team leadership that we consider essential for teaching cooperative behavior patterns. One of the key functions of our lead trainers is to help other members of the team become better leaders.

The Program is Blessed with Good Training Manuals

In the beginning, AVP flourished and grew miraculously, even though we had little structure and no adequate training manuals to use. The underlying philosophy of AVP was (and is) very different from the average organizational philosophy. Drawing on human relations training and our own ongoing experience, we wrote our own training materials using the creativity of our own volunteers. Developed in this way, the manuals have become an organic part of the AVP experience. Every leader now has a clear, well-written training manual that he or she can rely on, and may even have contributed to. The manuals are in a constant state of evolution and updating with creative ideas. Every one of our trainers may contribute to this process as he or she strives to produce high quality workshops.

In Our Organization Power Seeps Up, It Does Not Trickle Down

Our organizational model is one of building from the grass roots up. We believe that this approach is essential to nonviolence training. Our decision making process is one of consensus. AVP is about community, about acknowledging and encouraging the potential of all of us to grow and develop, and about working together by agreement and without coercion. AVP is measured and tested by its adherence to these values.

Local Coordinators

Our system of workshop coordinators for each institution or community is essential to making the system work. The local coordinator is a volunteer who organizes workshop teams and arranges workshop schedules with the institution or in the community for which he or she is responsible. Most coordinators are lead trainers who lead by example. They conduct many workshops themselves and invite others to do the same.

The AVP Program is a “Win-Win-Win Model”

The participants, whether in prison or in the community, win because they get the training they need to cope with violence, both their own and others. The AVP facilitators win because they have an opportunity to improve their leadership skills, get new insights about themselves, other people, and a nonviolent life. Prison, school or organization administrators and staff win by hosting a program that will improve the level of cooperative and nonviolent behavior in their institutions, making their jobs more rewarding. Communities win and community life is enhanced when their members learn new skills to cope with violence, enhance their lives and families, and build community.

The AVP Process

AVP workshops are a process of seeking and sharing, and not of teaching. We do not bring answers to the people we work with. We do not have their answers. But we believe that their answers lie buried in the same place as their questions and their problems – within themselves. Our job is to provide a stimulus and a “seeker friendly” environment to encourage them to search within themselves for solutions. People come to us with lifetimes of experience behind them. We believe that all this experience is valuable, and that it can be built on to make new lives. We try to draw out those experiences and help people look at them. In doing so, we are ourselves in a constant process of learning, from each other and from them. We try to make AVP an opportunity to examine life and make it more worth living.

The History and Focus of AVP

The program began in 1975 in the New York State prison system, and still continues to work there. Its first workshop was held in Green Haven Prison when an inmate group felt the need of nonviolence training in preparation for their upcoming roles as counselors in an experimental program in a Division for Youth institution for under-age offenders. AVP’s program of workshops has now spread to over 40 states and 40 countries, including parts of the world torn by political strife and human suffering, where AVP has been a beacon of hope and a path of strength.

For some years, the focus was on prisons and the major effort was to help people reduce the level of violence in the prison environment, to survive it, and at the same time to deal with the violence of their own lives. As time passed, it became more clear that the violence of prisons is merely a distilled version of the violence pervading the whole society. People unconnected with prisons began to seek AVP training, and it was recognized that the program was needed as much, or more, in the outside community as in the prisons. The program was extended to such varied groups as staffs of homeless shelters and foster care agencies, groups such as prison officers and developmentally disabled adults, and other groups generally interested in conflict resolution. At the urging of many incarcerated people, AVP has developed a strong and extensive youth component. Workshops have been offered geared to a variety of age levels and community settings such as schools, group homes and organizations supporting youth at risk. A separate AVP Youth Manual was published in 2000.

Workshops

There are three levels of workshops in the AVP program – Basic, Advanced, and Training for Facilitators. The Basic workshop is 16 hours which can be divided in increments as needed, such as 2 hours, 4 hours, or 6, 5, 5. The workshop is most manageable when there is a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 20-24 participants. A fourth step or level is experienced when participants continue beyond the Training for Facilitators as apprentice facilitators, gaining experience and skill, while integrating the process and principles of AVP as an ongoing learning process and lifestyle. This fourth level is critical because it is in sharing oneself deeply that true, lasting change is found, and it is through that sharing that others find nonviolent paths toward peace and happiness.

AVP IMPACT

Prison-to-Community Effect - California

• A man in prison took AVP, and his wife was impressed at his improvement. Her son had problems with his anger and had expressed a willingness to find a way to deal with it. He decided to take AVP himself, and changed his life. His incarcerated father was encouraged to see that he could still positively influence his family from behind bars.
• A man in prison, incarcerated for some 25 years, who had taken many programs as they became available, finally took AVP. His counselor was impressed by his sudden change of attitude, and upon seeing this, his wife decided to take AVP herself.
• A man incarcerated for years as a “lifer” at CMC, having taken many programs, took the first AVP workshop there when the program became available. He continued in the program, and trained as a workshop facilitator. His shift in attitude was noticed and he was given a release date. Upon arriving back in the community, he contacted AVP-California, and co-founded AVP-Antelope Valley. Not long after, he was instrumental in forming a chapter of Youth Build as well, helping youths to reclaim their lives through education and career building.

Youth-to-Community Effect - California

1. A high school student was experiencing problems at school and at home. His parents did not know what to do and psychological counseling was not helping. Being apprised about AVP’s effect on attitudes, he and his parents cooperated in getting him to an AVP workshop. His step-father was impressed by an AVP video provided and shared it with his (future) boss. Upon completion of the 18-hour workshop, the young student shared with his counselor his enthusiastic support for bringing AVP to the rest of the students.

2. AVP-HIPP (original on VHS created by AFSC)

Professional Peer-to-Peer Effect

1. “Prior to the training, our receiving room on my shift [7-3] had 5 or 6 uses of force per month. Since the training [75% of his staff had training], there have been a maximum of 5 uses of force in the last 2 years.”

Captain Edmonds (city prison system)

2. “I have personally seen such a major difference in the way they perceive themselves, the way they interact with each other, and the way they interact with support staff, whether they be social service, medical or maintenance. The rate of sick abuse or not coming to work has dropped and the overall attitude of the workplace has improved.”

Captain Whitaker (city prison system)

Inmate-to-Inmate Effect

1. “I’d like to take this opportunity to express my support for and admiration of the Alternatives to Violence Program. As a Warden of a State Prison in Delaware I saw the AVP facilitate a dramatic reduction in the number of assaults between inmates in what had been a difficult maximum security unit.

“As the program continued to run and “graduate” more and more inmates, the overall climate improved to a point where the inmates were actually seeking out ways to positively effect their living environment.

“As the Chief of Prisons for Delaware, I’ve seen similar results in each of the prisons that have implemented Alternatives to Violence Programs.

“There have never been any security breaches and the staff and inmate population alike respect the AVP volunteers.

“I’d highly recommend the Alternatives to Violence Program to any correctional manager and especially to those experiencing a high level of inmate on inmate conflict.”

Stan Taylor, Commissioner

Delaware Department of Correction

2. “Before AVP I only thought about violence, there was no second option. AVP saved my life, it gave me another option. The violence in my life got worse and worse. 1 spent most of my 11 years in prison in the hole. I am not a sensitive, caring, understanding individual, but this program has really had an impact on me. During my first basic as a trainer, there were a number of inmates there whom I had been very violent to before. I knew if I was to be a role model, to live AVP, I had to apologize to them for what I had done. It was odd to apologize to someone I had defeated and who had pleaded for his life to me. Some friends got out of maximum for having beat up some correctional officers and came to me anxious to get some action. I explained to them that type of activity was not me anymore…When I was a warrior I fought with all the tools I could fight with, I learned to be the best that I could be. Now to be a warrior for nonviolence, I had to learn the tools of AVP.”

Inmate Facilitator, USA

3. “I went into the workshop as a pessimist and I came out as a changed person. I was alive, I was actually alive. I liked what I saw in myself. It was a real high and I've been doing it for two years and I love that feeling. And to see other people awakened in the workshops, to see their lives changed.”

Inmate Facilitator, USA

4. "It's incredible, it's great. The wall came down. AVP makes real change from effects of communism, 70 years is hard to change. It breaks down barriers between employees. It's our first experience of freedom and what it means."

Community Participant, Russia

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS AVP?

AVP in the United States      (www.avpusa.org)

AVP in Australia      (www.avpq.org.au & www.avp.org.au)

With its first workshops conducted during 1990 in Queensland and New South Wales, AVP held its first workshop at Moretown Correctional Centre in Wacol, Brisbane in 1991. That workshop was very successful and AVP Queensland incorporated in 1992. Since then AVPQ workshops have been held in Queensland at Moreton B, Borallon, Sir David Longlands , the Brisbane Women's Prison, Woodford, and Toowoomba jail, and in the Brisbane area.

AVP in China      (www.avphk.org)

In 2002, people from New Zealand and South Africa conducted the first AVP workshops in China at The White House in Shatin and AVP-Hong Kong held workshops with the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society, a Hong Kong NGO. They continued to facilitate workshops with HKSAR Social Welfare Department, AVP-Hong Kong became a licensed charity in 2003 and celebrated its 5th Anniversary in 2007, at Youth Square in Tseung Kwan O.

AVP in New Zealand      (www.avpaotearoa.org.nz)

In 1991, people in New Zealand invited AVP to introduce workshops in Auckland West Prison and Auckland community. In 1992, Alternatives to Violence Project – Aotearoa was established in Auckland. AVP Aotearoa Facilitators have assisted with introducing AVP to Tonga, South Africa and Hong Kong.

AVP in Africa      (www.aglifpt.org)

AVP Annual International Gatherings have been held in Nigeria & South Africa. AVP groups are also found in the Repubic of Namibia, and Tanzania. The 2008 Gathering will be in Kenya.

AVP in Rwanda      (www.aglifpt.org)

From “Peace Cannot Stay in Small Places” – an evaluation:

“Peace cannot stay in small places,” said Ndagijimama Abdon, an elder Gacaca judge in Gisenyi, “it is good when peace reaches everywhere.” Abdon’s message of hope and expectation is characteristic of what we found as we traveled Rwanda to evaluate the impact of the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) on Rwanda’s slow recovery from genocide. As we interviewed more and more people, we began to feel that AVP is gaining momentum here in Rwanda. Again and again, interviewees issued a clarion-call for AVP to continue, to reach into every corner of the country, into every heart. Every person needs AVP, interviewees said again and again. Blanket our communities, reach every Gacaca judge, every leader, every genocide survivor. Go into the prisons and work with those who have been accused of genocide. Take AVP to our neighboring countries and help our region find peace. To the participants in this evaluation, AVP is not just a series of workshops that stays confined to small meeting rooms. Though AVP starts as a short three-day workshop, it inevitably ripples outward reaching small corners of each life in unexpected ways. Now in Rwanda, 4 years after the program was introduced here, AVP is beginning to feel like a movement: a movement of hope, of healing, of slow reconciliation, of possibility.

(www.aglifpt.org/PDF/AVP%20Rwanda.pdf)