Transforming Power, Building Community in Michigan
A banner that for several years has traveled all over the US and to many other countries collecting signatures and well-wishes from AVP facilitators and participants made its way this December to Ionia Correctional Facility. The inside facilitator team at the ICF (pictured here with outside facilitator Creative Kathy) were thrilled to add their contributions. The banner continues to travel, …
MAGALY QUISPE, the Bolivian AVP wonder worker, is scheduled to talk to us about her work in Bolivian Prisons on Saturday Sept 21, 11 AM at the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting worship space at 1420 Hill St., Ann Arbor MI. Magaly Quispe is a Bolivian Quaker and, like most Bolivian Friends, is ethnically Aymara (Aymaras are one of the two …
AVP Michigan Facilitators Joe and Kathy Ossmann and Bill Warters traveled to Ann Arbor to offer facilitation services for an advanced workshop organized by Friends Peace Teams. The August 16-18 2024 workshop was hosted by the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting which provided the space, childcare and home hospitality to make the workshop possible. The event featured a wonderfully diverse group …
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.