Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence

Now Hiring 16 Full Time AmeriCorps Team Members

Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence

AmeriCorps Member Service Description

Download Member Service Description 

Title:  Nonviolence AmeriCorps Team

Start Date:  August 2011

Type:  Full Time

Reports to: AmeriCorps Program Manager, with responsibility to a program director responsible for each sub-team

About the Institute

The Institute was founded by members of St. Michael’s Church team ministry in 2001 as a long-term solution to violence.

Now Hiring for AmeriCorps Program Manager

Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence

AmeriCorps Program Manager

Download PDF - Program Manager Job Description

Type:  Full Time

Start Date:  Position available immediately, to start as soon as possible

Reports to:  Chief Operating Officer

Supervises:  16 full-time AmeriCorps Team Members, with day-to-day support from other Institute program directors

Key Relationships:  Executive Director, COO and all senior staff, administrative staff, program supervisors, and Serve Rhode Island staff who administer the AmeriCorps grant

About the Institute

The Institute was founded by members of St. Michael’s Church team ministry in 2001 as a long-term solution to violence.

Announcing Nonviolence Education Institute

Nonviolence Education Institute:  A fellowship to enrich schools and transform lives

Download PDF - NEI Purpose

Download PDF - NEI Details

Download PDF - NEI Application

Mission

The mission of the Nonviolence Education Institute (NEI) is to bring educators and school personnel together, as fellows, to reflect and engage in the practice of nonviolence for the purpose of building and sustaining a positive school community.   

Goals

• To learn and internalize Dr. Martin Luther King’s theory of nonviolence
• To provide practical tools to implement nonviolence in educational settings across Rhode Island
• To foster effective interactions among school community members and create a safe and supportive educational         environment for all
• To create a statewide professional network of nonviolence educators and school personnel
• To reaffirm and reinforce our individual passion and motivation for working with students

Why is this important?

Nonviolence workers on the streets of Providence share ideas with U.S. Attorney General

Attorney General Eric Holder, right, speaks last week with Juan Carter, third from left, Ajay Benton and Teny Gross, left, of the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence.

                                                                                                                            The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

 

PROVIDENCE — Jose Rodriguez could hardly believe how his life had changed.

There he was last week, in a conference room at the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence, fielding questions from U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, the highest-ranking prosecutor in the nation and the first man of color to serve in that position. Holder wanted to know how Rodriguez and other street workers with violent pasts worked to change their ways and make the streets safer in Providence and Central Falls.

Rodriguez, who works in Olneyville, one of the city’s high-crime districts, knows violence. He was convicted of attempted murder for shooting a man in North Providence over a dispute involving his sister. And how much time did he spend at the Adult Correctional Institutions?

“Four years, two months, two weeks and 12 hours,” he said with a smile. “I got out on Jan. 27, 2010.”

Rodriguez was joined at the conference table by Sal Monteiro Jr. and Ajay Benton, also ex-convicts who have worked at the institute for years. Monteiro, who drove a getaway car in a Pawtucket murder, serves as the organization’s nonviolence training coordinator, while Benton, who was once locked up on drug charges, is the director of the street workers program.

Holder spent about 45 minutes meeting with the street workers and touring the institute’s newly refurbished brick building on Oxford Street in South Providence. His visit, which was closed to the media, was lost in a news conference following the tour when Holder was peppered with questions about the Justice Department’s policy on dealing with dispensaries that sell medical marijuana.

Rodriguez, Monteiro and Benton found Holder’s interest in the nonviolence programs and his candor refreshing. They said he wanted to know everything about the gang problem in Providence and recent shootings and murders (Providence murders for 2009 and 2010 totaled 39). He also was intrigued at how the institute was practicing civil-rights philosophies touted by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

“He really was trying to pick our brains and find out what we do,” Benton said. “He would like to duplicate what we do in other cities.”

The institute and its team of street workers rove the city to settle disputes among rival street gangs and young people who are prone to violence. Their mission also takes them to the Adult Correctional Institutions where they speak to prisoners and try to change their ways and get them to accept the philosophy of nonviolence.

They also report to local hospitals when someone is shot to try to calm down warring factions and avoid possible acts of retribution.

Rodriguez said he saw the light after he was denied parole. He said he started taking prison classes on nonviolence and somewhere along the way, he bought in to the theory. The transformation helped him land a paying job as a street worker, a dangerous job, but an important one to quell escalating youth violence.

The street workers felt comfortable being around Holder. He grew up in the Bronx, was raised in Queens and played freshman basketball at Columbia University. After graduating from law school, he worked for the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.

Holder has seen plenty of violence. He served as Superior Court judge in Washington, D.C., until he stepped down to become the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. There, his office prosecuted powerful drug gangs that were moving crack cocaine and killing their rivals.

At the time, Washington had one of the highest murder rates in the nation.

Teny O. Gross, the institute’s executive director, said arranging Holder’s visit had been in the works for years. He cited U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a supporter of the institute for more than a decade, and Col. Dean M. Esserman, the Providence police chief, for playing crucial roles.

Both men have known Holder for a long time.

In January, Gross said, he traveled to the Justice Department in Washington and met with the staff of Laurie Robinson, an assistant attorney general who accompanied Holder to Providence.

Gross beamed with pride when he saw the street workers, many of whom were once considered society’s castoffs, having a discussion with Holder, “the symbol of justice in the United States.”

“That was a thing of beauty,” he said.

bmalinow@projo.com

Welcome to the Institute

HISTORY

The Institute was founded by members of St. Michael’s Church team ministry in 2001 as a long-term solution to violence. Originally a training organization, the Institute hired its first Executive Director, Teny Gross, in 2001 and he introduced the Streetworkers program in 2003.

Since then, a constellation of programs has grown to better serve the community’s most vulnerable youth and families whose lives have been affected by violence. Today the organization has a $1.8 million budget, a board of 30 members and a staff of 32.

MISSION

Our mission is to teach, by word and example, the principles and practices of nonviolence, and to foster a community that addresses potentially violent situations with nonviolent solutions. We work to build Dr. King’s ideal of the nonviolent Beloved Community.

THE NEED

Providence is one of the poorest cities for children in the nation, and poverty level correlates to rates of violence. There are estimated to be over 1,400 gang members in the city.

A 2009 survey of youth in the Institute’s summer jobs program revealed that nearly 50% of the respondents had lost a family member to murder; 75% had lost a friend to violence; 90% had a friend who was stabbed or shot; nearly 90% said they regularly witness violence in their schools.

PROGRAMS

Noviolence Training directly teaches the principles and practices of nonviolence to students, police officers, inmates, and community members. Annually trains new trainers to work in schools and other settings.

Streetworkers provide advocacy and mentoring, and act as a positive presence in the streets and in the lives of gang-involved or at-risk youth. They build relationships, gather information and mediate conflicts to prevent violence. They respond to stabbings, shootings and homicides.

Youth Programs provide positive opportunities for youth in the form of employment, life skills training, leadership development, and safe-space and awareness-raising events.

Victim Support Services reaches out to provide services to families and friends of homicide victims, as well as living victims of stabbings and shootings.

Juvenile Reentry provides a family-centered approach and case management to releasees from the RI Training School referred by Probation and Parole Officers.

 

Institute for Nonviolence opens new doors in South Providence

  
 
Sunday October 17 in the Providence Journal

By Philip Marcelo

PROVIDENCE — Ten years ago, the Rev. Raymond Malm and Sister Ann Keefe walked out of another memorial service for another slain teen in their South Providence parish of St. Michael the Archangel and vowed to make a change.

It was late June, and the city was in the midst of a violent summer in which more than five youths would be murdered. Among those was 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera, who was shot in front of her house the day before she was to testify in a murder trial.

“I remember feeling like, ‘What a waste of life.’ I was so mad at our young people,” says Father Malm, now at St. Joseph Church in Newport. “I’d tell them, ‘You’re going to get your revenge, and we’re going to be back here in two weeks for another funeral.’ ”

As Father Malm and Sister Keefe recall, they stood at the steps of St. Michael and took in a broad view of the neighborhood — the parking lots, the scrubby fields and the low-slung apartment complexes off Prairie Avenue.

Their eyes fell on the church’s convent, which had closed in the 1970s.

Board of Directors

Joyce Butler, Chair, Early childhood practice and policy consultant

Robert J. McConnell, Esq., Vice Chair, partner, Motley Rice LLC

Rob Gessman, Treasurer, CPA, Partner, DiSanto & Priest

Seth H. Handy, Esq., Secretary, Chace Ruttenburg & Freedman LLP

Teny O. Gross, Executive Director

Joseph Abouzeid, News Director, WPRI/WNAC

Dante Bellini, Executive Vice President, RDW Group, Inc.

Emelda Benitez, Community Relations, Aramark Education

Oliver Bennett, Senior Vice President, Bank of America

David Bowerman, Vice Chairman, Head of Business Services, CFG and RBS Americas

Honorable William C. Clifton, Associate Judge, RI District Court

Robert Clark Corrente, Esq., Burns & Levinson LLP, former US Attorney

Margaret E. Curran, Esq., former US Attorney

Honorable Francis J. Darigan, Jr., RI Superior Court

Alexis Devine, Youth Development Coordinator, Lifespan hospital system

Colonel Dean Esserman, Chief, Providence Police Department

Sister Joyce Flowers RSM, St. Michael’s Church

Cedric Huntley, Director, MET Recreation Center

Thomas J. Izzo, community activist, former Rhode Island State Senator

Matt Jerzyk, Director of Government Relations & Senior Counsel to the Mayor

Roni Kabessa, owner, Décor Craft Incorporated

Sister Ann Keefe, SSJ, St. Michael’s Church

Father Raymond Malm, priest, St. Joseph’s Church

Eugene Mihaly, Ph.D., Chairman, Mihaly International Corp.

Rev. James Miller, former executive minister, RI State Council of Churches

Heidi Keller Moon, community activist

F. Paul Mooney, Jr., President, Geo. H. Fuller & Son

Keith Morton, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Providence College

Cleora O’Connor, Providence School Department

Barry Preston, Managing Director & CFO, Armory Revival Company

Barbara Sokoloff, President, Barbara Sokoloff Associates

Nondas Hurst Voll, community activist

Grand Opening of the New Institute

The Institute warmly invites you to a GRAND OPENING 9 years in the making ... nonviolence opens its home to the Beloved Community.

 

 Monday, October 18, 2010

265 Oxford St.

Providence

 

 9-11 AM - Building tours and refreshments
11 AM - News conference and ribbon cutting

 

 Please join us then!

Ex Con Helps Reduce Prison Fights in RI

In the Providence Journal, September 13, 2010

By John Hill, Journal Staff Writer

CRANSTON — Salomao Monteiro was pacing back and forth in the cafeteria, doing what he does these days: talking about nonviolence.

Ten men, some in orange, some in beige, some in white T-shirts, sat in four rows in every other chair listening as Monteiro passed out a questionnaire. The first to finish handed his paper to Monteiro, holding it in both hands, like he was praying.

But the inmate’s hands weren’t clasped in prayer. They were shackled together.

Monteiro, who works for the Institute for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence, was in the Maximum Security Unit of the Adult Correctional Institutions. His listeners weren’t just convicts; they were from the segregation unit, locked in solitary for fighting.

How to Learn and Teach Nonviolence

Looking for a great volunteer opportunity?

Love to work with youth?

Want to learn about and teach nonviolence?

This October and November, over 3 weekends, the Institute is holding a 30-hour Nonviolence Training-of-Trainers series.

Information and an application are available by download:

Download ToT Fall 2010 Coverletter

Download ToT Fall 2010 Application

Any questions, contact Alyssa Metthe, Assistant Director of Training, at 401-785-2320 or alyssa@nonviolenceinstitute.org.

A Minimum Wage Job That Pays Better Than Minimum Wage

Photo:  The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

Article by Bob Kerr, The Providence Journal, August 15, 2010 

The job program at the Institute For the Study and Practice of Nonviolence is geared toward youths 14 to 19, who live in Providence and have little chance of finding a job anywhere else. Francisco Montanez,  right, has been in and out of trouble. “There’s no point in dying for nothing,” he says. He has a summer job cleaning a Providence elementary school.

During the interview for the summer job program, the kids are asked to list goals for the coming year. A bunch of them say the same thing:  “I just want to stay alive.”

It is not overdone teenage dramatics. It is the way it is. The people doing the interviews know too well that these kids are looking at very few options and most of them are bad. Simple survival is one of the good ones.

The basic question and the very basic answer are further proof, if any were needed, that most of us don’t have a clue. It tells us we have no idea of the distance some kids have to cover just to get to the starting line of a life that might turn normal — if a few things break the right way.

So this job, this summer job at minimum wage, is vital. It is an introduction to how things work in places where violence is not an everyday thing and showing up on time is part of the plan.

Providence At-risk Teens Find Surf Camp Swell

Tracy Breton, in The Providence Journal, August 30, 2010

MIDDLETOWN -- Richard, a 14-year-old from the Manton neighborhood in Providence and soon-to-be high school freshman, looked down at his knees, then up at his elbows as he emerged from the water on Second Beach Sunday morning. "The scrapes are the worst thing about this but it doesn't matter because this is so much fun," he said, a huge grin on his face.

He's talking about surfing. Clad in a wetsuit, Richie stands in the sand and earnestly sums up what he's learned over three days of lessons: "You have to do what the professors do: They tell you to put your back up and find the wave when it's coming. Once the wave is kind of behind you, you start paddling. Then you stand up and do nice moves on the board, nice tricks."

Richie takes a surfboard and demonstrates.

John Hope Settlement House and the Institute

Posted on the John Hope Settlement Blog, August 27, 2010 - http://johnhopesettlement.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/brown_at_johnhope/

On Thursday, August 26, staff from John Hope Settlement House and the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence spoke to a group of students from Brown University about community and service in Providence. Among the topics they discussed were ways to mentor Providence youth at John Hope and juvenile justice issues addressed through the Nonviolence Institute and other community agencies in the city.

PROVIDENCE, RI – What are the most pressing social issues facing residents in Providence? What kinds of community resources are available to students who are new to the city? What does community look like when you’re talking about the neighborhoods of Providence? These are some of the questions that were addressed when a group of incoming students from Brown University ventured “off the hill” to join representatives from John Hope Settlement House and the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence on Thursday, August 26 at John Hope, 7 Thomas P. Whitten Way.

Nonviolence Is the Answer

Innovative Rhode Island Surf Camp Program Provides Positive Alternative For Troubled Youth

By Allison Arteaga in Eastern Surf Magazine, easternsurf.com

August 23, 2010

The city of Providence, RI, may be just a short car ride from popular surf breaks in Newport and Middletown, but for the young men and women who struggle to survive on the streets in one of New England’s most violent cities, the beach is a world away. Gang violence in Providence has run rampant over the past year, to the point where news reports of retaliatory shootings and murders show up on a weekly basis. Local law enforcement and city officials continue in their efforts to get the problem under control by locking up dangerous criminals, but another organization has been working towards a somewhat different solution.

The Providence-based Institute For The Study And Practice Of Nonviolence is getting at the root of the problem by trying to change the hearts and minds of the people of Rhode Island’s capital. Through a team of dedicated street workers trained to diffuse dangerous situations and a variety of outreach programs designed to target at-risk youth, the Institute hopes to spread peaceful conflict resolution skills. And Shayla Belanger, a surfer and Case Manager for Juvenile Re-entry with the Institute, believes that the organization’s greatest impact comes from its youth programs, where kids who have become involved with gangs are given the opportunity to turn themselves around.

Institute Teams with Providence College MBA Students

Providence College has recently reported on their MBA Consulting Center pilot project.  The Institute partnered with the Center, becoming its first client.

Read the full story on the College's website here:

http://www.providence.edu/About+PC/College+News/Press+Releases/MBA+Consulting+Center+Pilot.htm

WRNI highlights the Institute

WRNI health care reporter, Megan Hall, reported on the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in two parts this week.  Follow the link to WRNI's website to read the transcript or listen to the audio coverage.

Part One focuses on Executive Director, Teny Gross.

Part Two focuses on the Nonviolence Streetworkers program.

Winter 2010 Edition of "Straight Talk"

View or download the full newsletter as a PDF file

Time Magazine highlights the Institute

Time Magazine highlights the Institute in its Saturday, April 17 article, "How Not to Raise a Bully - the Early Roots of Empathy."  Visit Time online to read the full article:  http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1982190,00.html.

Community Leaders Inducted into 2010 MLK Hall of Fame

 

NAACP President Cliff Monteiro, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, Superior Court Judge O. Rogiree Thompson and Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence

Mayor David N. Cicilline has inducted three Providence community leaders into the 7th annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hall of Fame.  The ceremony recognized Superior Court Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence Executive Director Teny Gross and President of the NAACP Cliff Montiero for their efforts to advance civil rights in our community.  Providence is the only city in the nation with an official MLK Hall of Fame.  

Vicim Support Session for November 2009

Each month, Victim Support Services at the Institute hosts a Mutual Support session.  The support sessions are generally held on the third Wednesday of the month, at 7 PM.

This flyer contains the details for November's support session:  Download Support Flyer Nov 2009

AFP-RI Names the Institute Outstanding Philanthropic Organization of 2009

The Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence has been selected as the 2009 Outstanding Philanthropic Organization by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.  The award will be given at Rhode Island's National Philanthropy Day luncheon on Tuesday, November 24 at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

The Institute is in the company of impressive individuals and organizations who are this year’s National Philanthropy Day Community Award recipients.

Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, Outstanding Philanthropic Organization

Presented to a civic or service organization or foundation which has demonstrated a significant commitment to the community over above what might normally be expected. 

Brown Daily Herald: For a Select Squad, an Anti-Gang Vigil

October 9, 2009

George Miller

Metro Editor

After schoold Wednesday, three students are hanging out outside Gilbert Stuart Middle School in Providence. It’s been an hour or so since classes let out for the day, but they’re standing around talking to a grown man — a streetworker with the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, which aims to combat youth violence in the city. Two other streetworkers, Tony Kim and Ali Amoure, pull up to the curb in Kim’s car.

“Why aren’t you home yet?” Amoure asks one of them, whom he recognizes as a student at Bridgham, another middle school nearby that he watches over daily. He gets no definitive answer.

Tuesday, a student was arrested at Bridgham after trying to attack another student with a broken bottle, Amoure says. Four streetworkers were called to the scene.

Providence Journal: Providence gang members take to the surf

Monday, August 31, 2009

W. Zachary Malinowski
Journal Staff Writer

Tropical Storm Danny kicked up a decent surf late Friday morning at Narragansett Town Beach, but the small group of gang members paddling on surfboards near the corner sea wall didn’t seem too fazed by the possibility of an impending storm or the dangers of the Atlantic.

The boys and young men from the streets of Providence are accustomed to danger: murders and drive-by shootings have been a regular part of their lives and all of them have spent time locked up for various crimes in the Training School in Cranston. Last week’s outing, was well … a day at the beach.

New Institute newsletter - "straight talk"

View or download the PDF here (344K)

Providence Journal on our future home

See the article on ProJo's website here, including a video.

A decrepit South Providence convent will be transformed into The Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence

07:41 AM EST on Monday, March 2, 2009
By Philip Marcelo
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- A temporary chain-link fence, now weatherbeaten and rusting in places, surrounds the red-brick building to keep out vandals, who have still managed to tag a few windows with bright orange paintball pellets and shatter at least one pane.

Nearly 70 years ago, the South Providence building was erected as a convent, a home for the teaching nuns of St. Michael the Archangel Church. For the last eight years it has sat vacant and decaying.