The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) enables participants to deal with potentially violent situations in new and creative ways. Workshops are facilitated by certified facilitators and are fully experiential. All AVP workshops draw on the shared experience of participants, using interactive exercises, discussions, games, and role-plays to examine the ways we respond to situations where injustice, prejudice, frustration, and anger can lead to violent behavior. The Basic Workshop explores the five pillars of AVP: affirmation, communication, cooperation, community building, and transforming power.

An AVP workshop can help you to:

• manage strong feelings such as anger and fear
• deal more effectively with risk and threatening situations
• build good relationships with other people
• communicate constructively in difficult situations
• recognize the conflict management skills you already have
• be true to yourself while respecting other people
• understand why conflict happens
• approach conflict in a more creative and less reactive manner
• consider your own relationship to systems of violence.

Leader(s)

Laurent Hahn has been facilitating Alternatives to Violence for more than 25 years. His career was in human services and higher education, specifically organizational dynamics. Laurent was first invited to participate in an AVP workshop in 1990 and, so impressed with its power to transform, has been facilitating AVP workshops in the community, at correctional facilities, and in summer youth programs in the Delaware Valley ever since. “AVP is a way to make a difference that really makes a difference. Take the first step and together, let’s carry this forward to every community.”

.O models and teaches the transformative power of Love, which she expresses in many ways, including facilitating AVP workshops in the community. .O’s Quaker meeting (Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting) place under its care her ministry of deepening the understanding and experience of alternatives to violence (“Love and Respect Transform”). She provides hospitality at Serenity House in Northeast Philadelphia and serves as a patient instructor at Temple University supporting medical students gain skills in communicating with patients. A dynamic group facilitator with years of experience in body wisdom, stress reduction, and the healing powers of love, .O has worked with such organizations as Women for Sobriety, Women Within, and Interim House (a drug and alcohol treatment center).

John Meyer has facilitated AVP workshops at Pendle Hill, in various community settings, and at Graterford Prison over the past 15 years. As Pendle Hill’s Education Coordinator, John organizes and supports workshops, conferences, short courses, and lectures, as well as occasionally leading workshops and retreats.