Friends for a Non-Violent World Inc

FNVW will use GiveMN donations to grow our re-entry/transition programming and promote more community workshops, provide scholarships for ex-inmates, and to pay for workshop and meeting space.

Here are the details:
FNVW's Alternatives to Violence Project provides intensive, full-weekend workshops on non-violent conflict resolution and non-violence life skills in five prisons and jails in Minnesota. The workshops are entirely voluntary, and all community facilitators are extensively-trained volunteers. We povide three or four "inside" workshops every month of the year, plus related support groups.

FNVW is expanding AVP in two areas:
1. We're increasing our capacity to continue working with inmates who have shifted their paradigm from violence to non-violence after they leave prison. Women and men re-entering the community need solid support to keep making the choices that will result in employment, mended families and a chance to give back to society.

While AVP-MN has concentrated its work inside prisons and jails, due to the huge societal need for successful re-integration of released prisoners, we are expanding into the re-entry area. Few existing agencies provide the soft skills training and emotional support needed for housing, jobs, education and transportation to stay in place for those re-entering.

2. We're stepping up our community workshops in order to train more volunteer facilitators. We are in negotiation with two new prison facilities, and a larger pool of community facilitators will ensure that we can hit the ground running once we are invited in.

In sumary, the prize money will be used to:
1. Develop our re-entry/transition programming
2. Promote more community workshops
3. Provide scholarships for ex-inmates
4. Pay for workshop and meeting space

OUR STORY
Friends for a Non-Violent World is a Minnesota-grown, Quaker-inspired non-profit which promotes and creates transformational change on an individual, family (broadly defined), institutional and societal level. We are supported almost entirely by individual contributions and the dedicated efforts of hundreds of volunteers.

FNVW is a good ambassador to the state of Minnesota for the power that individuals and groups have to re-shape our society toward dignity for all living things, cooperation, and healthy resolution of conflict.

Our four programs carry this mission out:
1. Alternatives to Violence Project, described above.

2. Ways of Peace conference series, actively examining non-violence in major faiths (stay tuned for "Ways of Peace II: Non-Violence in the Traditions of Islam" this October!), and promoting dialogue based on treading the common ground between clashing faiths.

3. Peace in the Precincts, transforming the political process to make justice, sustainability and peace the principles by which to measure candidates.

4. People Camp, providing families (self-defined) and individuals a community in which to live, work and learn each summer in a camp setting.

FNVW has a widely diverse base of volunteers and supporters, unified by our belief in the power of justice, sustainability and peace to transform our world. We welcome you in!