What is an AVP Basic Workshop?

This interactive workshop provides people with tools for creating cultures of justice and peace in their personal and communal lives. This interactive workshop is an intensive, three-day learning experience which teaches interpersonal conflict resolution skills through a series of step-by-step processes. These experiences in small groups and one-to-one interactions build a sense of community and trust through exercises focusing on:

• Affirmation — Building self-confidence and trust.

• Communication — Improving both listening skills and assertive methods of expression.

• Cooperation — Developing cooperative attitudes that avoid competitive conflicts.

• Creative Conflict Resolution — Getting in touch with the inner Transforming Power to resolve violence. Role plays provide an opportunity to explore this power and learn new and creative ways to respond to real life conflicts in our lives.

AVP workshops seek to assist people in personal growth and change, recognizing that healing ourselves and supporting the healing of others is an important part of justice work. We join together, participants and facilitators both, to explore our own corners of violence and seek more satisfying ways to respond.  Each workshop is generally 12 – 20 participants.

Who is AVP for?

Everyone! And especially those who are or want to be actively engaged in creating positive change in the world. While not a civil disobedience specific training, you’ll find tools in AVP helpful, while not specifically a community organizer training, you’ll find tools in AVP helpful, while not a conflict transformation training, you’ll find tools in AVP helpful. If you’ve been doing peace building work for a long time or you are brand new to engagement, AVP workshops have useful tools. If you live in this world today, you’ll find tools in AVP for navigating the harshness of the world and planting seeds of beauty. 

Where did AVP come from?

In the 1970’s, a group of inmates (the “Think Tank”) at Greenhaven Prison in New York had witnessed the Attica riots and were also concerned with the “revolving door” they clearly saw in their institution. Youth were appearing in prison for fairly minor offenses, only to return (sometimes multiple times) for increasingly more serious and violent crimes. That era saw conflict on our streets around the Vietnam War. As a result, the Society of Friends (Quakers), who were active in the prison and were known to have conducted non-violence training and intervention around the war demonstrations. Together, the inmates and the Quakers developed non-violence workshops, with the involvement of people like inmate Eddie Ellis (who later became nationally recognized for his work on prison reform) and Bernard Lafayette (SNCC and CORE Freedom March activist). The first workshop was held at Greenhaven in 1975. 

Since then, AVP has continued to be facilitated by incarcerated people alongside volunteers from the outside while also spreading globally with people in communities across a diversity of cultures finding it valuable. From refugee camps to college campuses, rural farming communities to inner cities. While many Quakers continue to be involved, AVP is not a religious program, rather it is one that some participants integrate their faith or other worldview into while participating.