A Brief Account of the Early Beginnings of AVP

The Alternatives to Violence Project began in 1975 in the New York State prison system, and still continues to work there. Its first workshop was held in Green Haven Prison where an inmate group, the Think Tank, felt the need of nonviolence training in preparation for their upcoming roles as counselors in an experimental program in a Division for Youth institution for under-age offenders. The Think Tank asked a local Quaker group to provide such training, and this was done. From Green Haven the program spread to other prisons, sometimes through prison Quaker meetings, more often by word of mouth.

For some years, the focus was on prisons and the major effort was to help people to reduce the level of violence in the prison environment, to survive it, and at the same time to deal with the violence in their own lives. As time passed, it became more clear that the violence of prisons is merely a distilled version of the violence pervading the whole society. People unconnected with prisons began to seek AVP training, and it became clear that the program was needed as much, or more, in the outside community as in the prisons. The first full-fledged community AVP program was offered in the small town of Owego, New York, at the instigation of two local probation officers. It was intended to help probationers cope with the problems that had led to their delinquency, but also to create understanding of those problems in the community at large. It therefore has always welcomed people who are not in trouble with the law as well as people who are, and it has made of this mixed group a single community. (adapted from the Basic Manual introduction)

The Children's Creative Response to Conflict (CCRC) was really the mother of AVP. Lee Stern, along with Lawrence Apsey, were the founders of AVP. Before being named AVP, the program was called the Quaker Project on Community Conflict (QPCC). It got the name AVP when one of the prison officers asked as we were leaving the prison, "How was your Alternatives to Violence Workshop?" (adapted from notes by Stephen Angell)