ALTERNATIVES TO VIOLENCE PROJECT NEW YORK

In 2019, AVP/NY held 168 two to three-day (16-22 hour) workshops, 9 short (6-12 hour) workshops and 9 mini workshops with 2,263 participants and 375 volunteer facilitators. Facilitators logged 25,548 volunteer hours.

156 of those workshops were held inside nineteen prisons (including one federal prison) and one county jail in New York State, with 1,871 participants completing. Four of those workshops were held in Spanish and two were bi-lingual. We trained 193 new apprentice facilitators inside the walls.

We held 19 full (16 hour minimum) workshops in community settings with 127 adults, 64 young adult or teen and 11 youth participants. We trained 32 adult and 15 teen apprentice facilitators. Five short workshops (6-12 hours) had 76 youth and nine adults complete and five mini (half-day) workshops saw 56 youth and 18 adults.

Teen and adult facilitators led one Basic and one Advanced Workshop with 20 and 24 high school students from Walton and Franklin Schools and they held three mini (one-day) workshops with 7th graders, reaching 56 youth.

Through Osborne Association, we continue to hold workshops with 16-20 year olds from the Bronx, reaching 28 participants and 15 became apprentice facilitators.

We continued to grow our program in Syracuse, holding one short workshop, one Basic Workshop, one Trauma Awareness and Resilience Workshop and one Training for Facilitators Workshop, adding ten new apprentice facilitators to the community.

Our community work also extends to Elmira, Buffalo, Rochester, Westchester, Newburgh, Ithaca and Trumansburg.

We continue to hold twice-monthly Landing Strip meetings--support groups for people returning from prison to Rochester and in 2020, we expanded to Newburgh with monthly meetings. These meetings are also a means of reaching community members who are interested in AVP.

With COVID severely limiting our ability to provide in-person workshops, we are beginning to hold workshops on-line.