Grant Proposal: Engaging Former Inmates in Community Peacebuilding
Applicant:
Friends for a Non-Violent World
1929 South 5th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55454
612-321-9787 (phone)
612-321-9788 (fax)
info@fnvw.org
www.fnvw.org
Contact: Michael Bischoff, Executive Director
612-321-9787
Amount requested: $75,000
Introduction
Prison can be a breeding ground for violence. This project explores how prison can also be a development time for peacemakers, who then bring their abilities back to their communities.
The desired outcome of this initiative is to engage recently released inmates in peacebuilding activities in Minnesota. The activities described here are intended to assist former inmates to be effectively involved in transforming violence in the streets and homes of their neighborhoods.
This proposal is built on the foundation of the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP). Workshops in nonviolent conflict resolution and community building are currently held by AVP in four Minnesota prisons. Each year several hundred inmates participate in this program.
We propose a pilot project to hire 10 recently released inmates on a part-time basis. These 10 staff would be recruited from individuals who have completed the full series of AVP workshops while in prison. This new team of trainers would be responsible for leading workshops on non-violence in their neighborhoods. In addition to leading workshops, this team would join twice monthly visioning sessions to imagine broader ways to engage former inmates in tranformative peacebuilding.
This pilot project would be evaluated and reported on with the intent of helping shape larger initiatives to involve former inmates in peacebuilding. Partners from other private and government agencies will be included in the visioning sessions and the evaluation to develop these learnings.
Organization and Program Background
This grant is based on the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) of Friends for a Non-Violent World. Friends for a Non-Violent World is a nonprofit (501c3) organization functioning in Minneapolis, MN, since 1981.
AVP was started by inmates at Greenhaven Correctional Facility in New York in 1975. Those inmates designed a program to help fellow inmates and youth community members learn and practice nonviolent alternatives to violence. Their goal was to help their younger brothers and friends avoid mistakes they had made. During weekend workshops, participants use role-plays, story telling, and games to practice using nonviolent conflict resolution in particular conflicts. Since 1981, AVP has spread to 35 states and 15 countries. AVP started in Minnesota under the care of Friends for a Non-Violent World.
In Minnesota, the Alternatives to Violence Project currently holds ongoing workshops in four correctional facilities in the state. Workshops are also held at high schools, churches, and for the broader community. In the past five years, one thousand inmates in Minnesota have completed at least one 20-hour AVP workshop. About three hundred inmates have been received sixty hours of training and have volunteered as facilitators for the program.
Workshops in prisons are led by teams of volunteers which include both inmates and outside volunteers.
Prison administration and the Minnesota Department of Corrections administration know and respect the program and its results. In 1999, an AVP program at Blue Earth County Jail received the "Best New Jail Program" of the year award at the Minnesota Jail Programmers conference. Most prisons in the state have asked for the program in their institution. The program is rapidly expanding in prisons in Minnesota and other states. This proposal seeks to balance the growth inside prisons with corresponding support and follow-up outside of prison.
Friends for a Non-Violent World proposes building on current relationships with the corrections staff and inmates, to mobilize the powerful peacemaking capacity of recently released inmates.
Problem Being Addressed:
As many AVPers come out of prison, they really want to and try to volunteer as facilitators with AVP on the outside. Some succeed, but many cannot overcome the many barriers to their participation. Some key barriers to their volunteering are: strict parole plans that don't allow for movement not related to paid work, a strong need to earn money so that volunteering is not an option, transportation limits, family pressures, and others.
In Minnesota, most people transitioning out of prison do not stay out. At the Hennepin County Workhouse, one facility where AVP is active, sixty percent of the inmates return to that same facility within five years. The high recidivism rate alone is crying out for new, creative approaches. In addition, countless inmates have a depth of commitment and willingness to live a path of peace and share that peace with others that is tranformative to witness. Very few structures exist to compliment the passion of former inmates to give back to their communities in relevant, realistic ways.
This initiative aims to build upon the successes of a pilot program to engage former inmates in peacemaking, while also creating wider systems to support the peacemaking capacity of those transitioning out of prison.
Project Proposal
This proposal requests one year of funding for 10 part-time paid AVP facilitators/dreamers. These ten employees would be recruited primarily from men and women who have started with AVP while inside prison, who are now on the outside. This proposal also requests funding for a program manager's salary and one-third of the Executive Director's salary to facilitate long-term initiative development.
In July 1999, Friends for a Non-Violent World hired Abdul-Hakim As-Siddiq to work with AVP in the community. Abdul-Hakim began participating with AVP while an inmate at the Faribault state prison in 1994. While an inmate, Abdul-Hakim co-facilitated 40 weekend AVP workshops, and moved on to the role of "lead facilitator." As a lead facilitator, Abdul-Hakim supervised other volunteers--both inmates and people from the outside. Abdul-Hakim is currently on work-release, and will be on parole as of April, 2000.
In the past six months, Abdul-Hakim has coordinated and facilitated AVP workshops in the community and with high schools. In addition, he has initiated an AVP support group at a half-way house and compiled a directory of other social service agencies offering post-release support.
If this grant is approved, Abdul-Hakim's current role would be filled by a new staff person, and Abdul-Hakim would administer the project described in this proposal. Given his successful orientation and functioning with current programs in the organization, Abdul-Hakim hopes to initiate this next level of responsive programming.
To support Abdul-Hakim's coordination and to give attention to wider initiatives within the criminal justice system and community influence, the grant also would pay for one-third of the time of the Executive Director. The Director would build networks with criminal justice professionals, funders, and potential agency partners to help connect this pilot project with macro-level change. The broader intent for the project is to increase systemic and pragmatic means of engaging former inmates in community peacebuilding. The Director would hold this vision and help the current project learn from and help influence wider change directed toward this aim.
Project Details
By offering part-time employment to former inmates, this project would remove one of the major barriers to participation in AVP after release from prison. By paying these community AVP facilitators, they would have more freedom to participate in the eyes of the Department of Corrections and from the perspective of their financial needs. This part-time work on evenings and weekends could also assist in financial stability for those individuals.
Currently, Friends for a Non-Violent World receives more requests for trainings on conflict resolution and violence prevention than we can respond to with current staff and volunteers. Schools, community centers, workplaces, and churches request trainers from AVP to customize workshops for their groups. With a team of experienced, paid facilitators to draw on, our capacity to reach farther into the community would expand. This employment would also allow these former inmates to continue their personal and professional development as peacemakers.
Co-facilitating community workshop would be the primary responsibility of these new part-time employees, but the jobs would also include 10 hours per month for training and visioning. All of the employees and additional volunteers would gather once every two weeks for a session of either training or visioning. One intent of these gatherings would be for training in broader concepts and strategies in peacemaking and restorative justice. In addition to training, at least half of this time would be set aside for dreaming up ways those transitioning out of prison could be engaged in peacemaking activities.
Potential future partners in larger initiatives would be invited to join these visioning meetings from the start. Relationships with parole officers, corrections administrators, other violence prevention agency staff, victim services groups, police, and other potential partners are currently being built. Representatives from all of these communities would be invited to join the visioning and training sessions. There is also money built into the grant to pay speakers and consultants for these sessions.
The pilot project is scheduled to run from September, 2000 to September, 2001. Prior to September, 2000 we will continue to build relationships with potential agency and individual project partners. In August, 2000, we will begin recruiting the new part-time training/dreaming staff. A formal evaluation of the project is scheduled for October, 2001. A report of the final evaluation will be published and distributed throughout the community in the fall of 2001.
Potential Systems Changes That Would Compliment This Project
We expect that the most significant ideas for structural changes and initiatives will be developed in the relationships and dialogue in the midst of the program. We also hope that the rich, creative atmosphere of other restorative justice initiatives in the region will feed this project. As the program develops, we will try for a give and take with the other initiatives around us to reach our vision of engaging former inmates in peacemaking. Given the intent to develop potential structural outcomes, some possible structural changes will be discussed at all stages of the project, to keep potentials of wider influence alive.
One possible change imagined is that official post-release parole plans regularly include community service in their plans. Imaging how each particular offender might give back to the community in a way that reflects his or her skill, interests, and crime might be an integral part of each individual's release plan. With this priority, state parole officers might help former inmates find the resources they need to carry out that community service. AVP facilitation would be one of many, many options for this service. As sentencing and peacemaking circles are incorporated into more and more of the correctional system, post-release circles might help each offender design these community service plans.
State legislatures and other regional policy makers would be invited into the visioning process of this initiative, with the hope of helping increase restorative and prevention practices at all levels of the criminal justice system. Policy makers will also be invited to attend certain prison AVP workshops, to explore alternatives to violence alongside inmates and let the view of life from the inside shape legislation.
A government-funded program, similar to Americorps, might arise to employ former inmates in community service on a broad scale. This pilot project might prove the viability and benefits of such partnerships to allow larger, specially designed programs to take place. Such a program might be focused on peacebuilding and include such things as mediation, neighborhood patrols, circles, and peace education in schools. Or the job roles might be varied and include a range of businesses and pick up other elements of this pilot.
This pilot project might also help spawn additional models of transitioning service recipients to service providers. Community service might be more incorporated into life inside prisons and/or into the sentencing process. Relationships surrounding this project might lead to additional structures to help make court mandated community service better fit the abilities, interests, and crimes of individuals.
Long term funding and expansion of this particular project is another potential we hold. Sources of ongoing funding from state, local governments, and private foundations will be explored by the Executive Director as the pilot project is carried out.
Evaluation
All our evaluation will keep in mind the overall goal of engaging former inmates in peacebuilding and removing barriers that impede that aspiration. The ways this pilot project reflects this goal will be monitored qualitatively in the twice monthly reflection/visioning sessions as well as in individual interviews with the part-time employees. These evaluations will describe employee satisfaction and the program's impact on their own behavior, especially with regards to "making it" on the outside in a sustainable way. Certainly, the project will include tracking the recidivism of those involved during and after the program.
In addition, the outcomes of the employee's trainings in the community will be evaluated as well with surveys of trainees at workshops and three months after the end of workshops. A mid-year review will be held with the employees as a whole to assess the quality and impact of trainings presented and adaptations needed. After each workshop the employees lead, the co-facilitators will meet with each other to exchange feedback.
The goal of making peacemaking activities more accessible to former inmates will be measured both with the success of participants of this project and with the ideas and relationships nourished at the visioning sessions and more informally around the project. Throughout the year, the Executive Director will track contacts with different programs and individuals, and include interviews with these partners in the final evaluation. With all these evaluations we will ask: Have we demonstrated any effective ways to engage former inmates in peacemaking? What have we learned from the successes and mistakes of this project to be more strategic in other initiatives with this goal?
Budget:
Income:
$75,000 Foundation support (including this grant)
$18,200 Fees for trainings
$24,900 Individual donations
Total income: $118,100
Expenses:
$30,000 Program Manager's (Abdul-Hakim As-Siddiq) salary, to administer pilot program
$67,600 Part-time Facilitator/Peace Team Members Pay (10 team members @ $13/hour 10 hours/week)
$7,500 Speakers and consultants fees for staff training
$10,000 One-third of Executive Director's salary to develop wider initiatives and acquire on-going funding
$3,000 Publish formal report of project and distribute to the community
Total expenses: $118,100
Summary
The potential for peacemaking that arises out of the experience of incarcerated individuals is at least as great as their capacity for violence. Currently, we as a society have almost no support for inmates to leave prison utilizing the power of peacemaking to restore the community's they have harmed. Crime and violence continue to fill this vacuum in the lives of recently released inmates.
Your investment of $75,000 into this pilot program begins to allow former inmates to utilize their capacity for peacemaking. This investment has the ability to expand exponentially, as this sample program nourishes the growth of wider systems to harness this power.