Transforming Power, Building Community in Michigan
On August 22-24 AVP Michigan partnered with Covenant Schools (formerly known as Covenant House Academy) in Detroit to host a Basic Workshop for young people from across the school’s 3 Detroit-area High School campuses. The dynamic AVP Michigan facilitation team included Joyful Joe, Amazing Alexis, Bold Bill who were joined by a talented out-of-state facilitator Optimistic O’Malley from Pennsylvania. It …
An AVP-affiliated group in Ann Arbor ran a community Basic + Special Topic on Trauma Resiliency, offered as an in-person workshop the week of May 30th featuring visiting AVP Facilitator Nadine Hoover. The workshop included 15 teen and adult participants, 1 lead facilitator and 3 apprentice facilitators as part of a pilot project with Mercy-USA that is focused on refugee …
We are pleased to report that AVP Michigan has resumed activity at Michigan’s Ionia Correctional Facility (ICF). We started with a meeting with the prison administration to reintroduce AVP, and then held a 4-hour meeting with our inside facilitators to check on the viability of getting started again. Then on April 22-24 we held a full Supplemental Training for Facilitators …
Volunteer programming is restarting at many Michigan correctional facilities and AVP Michigan is looking at getting going again. As part of this process, we were informed about important changes happening at the Muskegon Correctional Facility (MCF) that directly impact AVP at MCF. In 2019, Hope College partnered with Western Theological Seminary to provide a Christian liberal arts education to incarcerated …
The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) announced on March 13 that they were suspending all in-person visiting with prisoners and all volunteer programming inside the facilities. This was done in response to the need to take measures to halt the spread of the coronavirus 2019. See the announcement here. Thus, AVP Michigan will be halting all inside workshops until the …
Thanks to two successful Trainings for Facilitators (T4F) in November and December 2019, there are now 14 new AVP apprentice facilitators ready to begin their work at the Ionia Correctional Facility. Congratulations to all!
In October, the AVP Michigan team completed their 51st 3-day workshop since getting restarted! A lot of work and caring has gone into each session, and to top 50 workshops since our re-launch is quite an accomplishment. Congratulations to all, especially Joyful Joe and Creative Cathy who have provided leadership all the way along.
Congratulations to the inside and outside facilitators who completed our first Advanced Workshop at Ionia Correctional Facility (ICF)! The team included Joyful Joe, Nice Norm, Bold Bill, Friendly Philip (inside facilitator), and Kind Kenyatta (inside facilitator and workshop lead). Our focal themes for the September 20-22, 2019 workshop were Forgiveness, Relationships and Empathy. The thirteen participants gave the session strong …
The AVP Michigan chapter was previously active in the 1990s. After some time of inactivity it was revived in 2013 when we began offering monthly AVP workshops in the Muskegon Correctional Facility, a state prison for men. More than 200 men have participated in workshops there as of April 2019, with 22 inmates now active as inside facilitators. After hosting …
Conflict is part of life, and AVP is not about trying to eliminate it. Instead, we believe in something called “Transforming Power” that enables us to move in positive directions that shift conflict from hurting to helping. The transforming power mandala helps us remember what is required to be at our best.