Quaker calls for Midlands AVP group
Sarah Lane, a trained AVP facilitator, has approached Southern Marches Area Meeting about setting up an Alternatives to Violence group
A Friend from Evesham Meeting has approached Southern Marches Area Meeting with the intention of setting up an Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) group.
The move by Sarah Lane, a trained AVP facilitator and former prison chaplain, came ahead of the National Gathering for AVP on 4-6 October. According to the website, workshops combine experiential learning with practical training in conflict awareness and skills, and often run in prisons and other communities. Participants come from ‘diverse, mostly disadvantaged backgrounds. About fifteen to twenty per cent of participants have experience of domestic violence, either as perpetrators or victims’.
Sarah Lane told the Friend that she identified a need for the group as there is no longer one in the region because the previous organiser had to stop. She said: ‘People get a lot of out of it and research shows that it does make a difference.’ She added that they may run a taster workshop in Birmingham.
Evaluations show that ninety-one per cent of participants in 2010-11 reported that the workshops had helped them in ‘every form of personal development covered by the building blocks’. Evaluations also show that ‘AVP has much success in helping participants develop… key components to nonviolence’.
