Building Peace and Community: Alternatives to Violence Project Around the World

Since his introduction to working with communities through the peace movement in 1983, Graeme has been passionate about inclusive, interactive ways of working with communities, families and individuals. He has been particularly influenced by approaches that build on the strengths and aspirations of the people he works with. When he first attended an AVP workshop in 1993, he was struck by its power and potential. It has been an important part of his life ever since, although he was not an active facilitator for a number of years while his two daughters were young. As well as facilitating weekly AVP sessions, he is one of the co-convenors of the AVP International research sub-committee and an active member of the AVP NSW Council and the Australian AVP network. In 2003, inspired by AVP, he completed a PhD exploring a philosophy of nonviolence for youth work in Australia.

Outside of AVP, he has over 40 years’ experience working with families and communities including supporting homeless young people and families living in caravan parks, promoting community development, and facilitating fathering workshops for Aboriginal prisoners. For 18 years he was a practitioner and lecturer at the Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle, where his teaching, practice, and research focused on strengths-based approaches to working with families and communities. While at the University he also worked with Name.Narrate.Navigate, a trauma-informed violence prevention program using creative methods (including PhotoVoice) to work with young people. Currently, in addition to his work with AVP, he volunteers with Rising Tide (a climate action group) and Upcycle Newcastle (a charity promoting waste reduction), and maintains the Sustaining Community blog that focuses on strengths-based approaches to working with families and communities (including AVP).

Dawn E. Addy, Ph.D. is Director Emerita of the Center for Labor Research and Studies (CLRS) where she was chief administrator, while simultaneously holding a joint faculty position with Women and Gender Studies at Florida International University for almost twenty years. She worked closely with faculty, students, university administration, staff and external constituency groups. CLRS offers a certificate program in Conflict Resolution and Consensus Building at both graduate and undergraduate levels which lead her to become deeply involved with AVP pedagogy and methods for use in her classroom. She has been an AVP facilitator in the state prisons of Florida for close to thirty years. She brought many student interns into prison with her program. Many of those students continue to use AVP techniques in their careers as educators, social workers, psychologists, counselors, and other occupations.

Some of the external groups she has worked with include Baptist Health Systems, Miami-Dade County, Florida Correctional Institutions, Regions III and IV; State AFL-CIO groups in Florida, Minnesota, and Hawaii; international groups such as the Bermuda Public Services Association and Public Services International (PSI) Romania and Republic of Moldova; Community Relations Boards in City of Miami, and Miami Beach; community and worker coalition groups; Labor/Management Association groups; interfaith and immigrant coalition groups; and a wide variety of international and local worker groups.

She served AVP-USA as Vice President and President from 2014-2017. Since 2017 she has been Co-chair of the Education Committee for AVP International where she has been involved in manual writing, web-design, On-line Library design, and producing other educational resources for AVP facilitators in the US and around the world. She serves as advisor and coordinator for AVP Florida which currently facilitates AVP workshops in eight prison locations across the state, community workshops, and is scheduled to expand to even further in 2025.

Vaughn M. John is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He holds the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Peace and Justice Education. Vaughn initially trained as a research psychologist before completing a PhD in education. He has over 35 years’ experience in higher education working on projects on violence, conflict transformation, justice and peace education.

Vaughn’s early career involved monitoring the political violence in Natal and supporting communities and organizations affected by this state-sponsored war. This initial period included research in preparation for the democratic era in South Africa, with involvement in several large studies commissioned by organizations such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Constitutional Assembly, Department of Education, Oxfam and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees amongst others. Vaughn subsequently initiated several peace education and research programs straddling both the academy and broader community. He chaired a national task team which developed South Africa’s first qualification on conflict transformation and also served on an international task team which developed a Masters program for the United Nation’s University for Peace. He served two terms as co-convener of the Peace Education Commission of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) and is a founding member of the KZN Network of the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) and co-convener of the AVP International Research Team. Vaughn is a rated scientist by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and will be inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in 2024.

Vaughn has published extensively in the fields of peace education, transformative learning and research methodology. He is the co-author of the highly cited, Your Guide to Case Study Research (Rule & John, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Case Study Research in the Social Sciences (Edward Elgar Publishers). His current research explores the relationships between structural and physical violence, trauma-violence cycles and the roles of education in conflict transformation, trauma healing, social justice and broader peacebuilding. Vaughn John’s research, teaching and community work seeks to contribute to a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.

Betty J. McEady, an active AVP facilitator since 2010, serves in shared leadership roles as co-chair of the Education Committee, a board member, and a former member of the AVP California Steering Committee (2020-2023). Her service in AVP also includes special task-teams and work groups that supplement the roles and responsibilities of Standing Committees, and co-writer of AVP-USA workshop manuals. She facilitates AVP training workshops in various USA prisons and jails, communities, and schools. Her recent dissertation research emphasized the perspectives of formerly incarcerated men and women who were trained, during their incarceration, in the AVP approach to nonviolence. Her dissertation, “Being-in-the-World Nonviolently: Perspectives of Formerly Incarcerated Participants on Transformative Pedagogy for Nonviolence,” highlights the transformative power of AVP as voiced by inmates who viewed AVP as the catalyst to change in their lives.

Dr. McEady is a retired university professor, holding Professor Emerita status at California State University at Monterey Bay (2007) and Brandman-Chapman University in Irvine (2015). Her 50-year career in education began as a teacher in secondary schools in Florida, Georgia, and eventually a professor in California colleges and universities. She completed a Doctor of Education Degree in Curriculum and Instructional Design in Reading-Language Arts Development at the University of San Francisco (1982). After serving two years as a Fulbright Scholar in teacher training in West Africa, she returned to a professor position in the California State University System and completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California (2017).

As a Founding Faculty at California State University, Monterey Bay (1995-2007), Dr. McEady chaired the Departments of Liberal Studies and Teacher Education, served as interim director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, facilitated faculty learning communities in designing outcomes-based curriculum, and chaired the Faculty Academic Senate. Her scholarship and research emphases include: “Best Practices” in program development and assessment, institutional improvement and faculty engagement, outcomes-based teaching and learning, collaboration and peak performance in experiential teaching and learning, and integrating cognitive and metaphysical strategies for effective teaching and learning. Her publications in these areas include invited chapters in peer-reviewed journals and books, Advisory Panel Reports for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, and multiple conference presentations.

John has volunteered with the Alternatives to Violence Project [AVP] for 35 years. He was on the organizing leadership teams of AVP USA [President, Vice-President, Treasurer] and AVP International [Vice-President] and he also served on numerous committees of those organizations. He started or re-started AVP programs in Delaware, New Jersey, North Carolina and South Carolina.

John is regarded as the developer and national leader of the Immersion-Experiential training design for correctional staff development, which utilizes the AVP design. He has developed several specialized trainings: Teambuilding Attitude Conflict Transformational training, the Effective Supervisor Skills training and the Teambuilding Attitude and De-escalation Training. He has been published in numerous national and international publications, including: the American Correctional Association’s “Corrections Today,” the American Jail Association’s “American Jails,” the International Association of Correctional Training Personnel’s “Correctional Trainer,” the Alternatives to Violence Project/USA’s “Transformer,” the “Russian Federal Penitentiary Service Journal,” [the only non-Russian to be published] the “International Journal of Trauma Research and Practice,” “Friends Journal,” “CorrectionsConnection.com,” “Conciliation Quarterly” and the “Guidance Channel.” In 2023, Kendal Hunt published his book, “Mid-21st Century Criminal Justice; Transforming Work Culture,” which is directed at decision makers and educational institutions educating future criminal justice professionals.

John is an internationally recognized trainer, having developed and delivered innovative staff development trainings for many governmental agencies as well as Departments of Corrections in 7 states and two foreign counties [Russia and South Africa], the National Institute of Corrections and the United States Office of Safety and Health Administration. He has presented at numerous national and international conferences and has led international conflict resolution delegations to Russia, South Africa and China, and provided trainings in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and in West and Southern Africa. He has been honored by the International Association of Correctional Training Personnel with their “2004 Award of Excellence” and their “2018 Award of Excellence.”

John was trained as a clinical mental health therapist and in advanced leadership. He has held positions as executive director of health care facilities, the National Association of Social Workers (Delaware), LPCANC (the association for clinical mental health counselors in North Carolina), and the Delaware Reentry Consortium. He has also been the Clinical Director of the First State CISM team and was Correctional Training Coordinator 2 with the North Carolina Department of Prisons. 

Dr. Rocco is a Professor of Adult Education and Human Resource Development in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, Florida International University, USA. Dr. Rocco graduated from The Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in Adult Education & Human Resource Development. She is Editor-in-Chief of New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, serves on a dozen editorial boards and is a founding board member for the Journal of Mixed Methods Research; Dialogues in Social Justice: An Adult Education Journal; Journal of Global Education and Research; New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education; and Nursing & Health Sciences Research Journal. She served as the director of the Office of Academic Writing and Publication Support, College of Education. She is a 2024-2026 Ewha Global Fellow, Ewha Womans University, Korea, one of only twenty-five Houle Scholars from the U.S., a member of the 2016 class of the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame, 2016 Outstanding HRD Scholar and recipient of more than 35 awards for scholarship, mentoring, and service. Dr. Rocco has published 14 books including The Routledge Handbook of LGBTQ Identity in Organizations and Society (2024; with Gedro) She has co-edited five special issues (transgender experiences in organizations; health and wellness concerns of racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities; sexual minority issues in HRD; critical perspectives and HRD; adults with disabilities and work). She has over 300 publications in journals, books, and proceedings on continuing professional education, equity and privilege (specifically in terms of race/critical race theory, sexual minorities/LGBT, disability, and age), employability/career development, fostering student research and professional writing, and qualitative methods. Twenty-three articles, chapters, and conference papers have won awards. Many of these publications are with students and beginning scholars. Dr. Rocco has received the FIU TOP Scholars recognition twice (Notable Awards/Honors; Award Winning Publications), CASE Award for research twice, the University Excellence in Mentorship Award, and the LGBTQA Faculty Member of the Year Award. She participates in the AHRD Faculty Mentoring Partner program, served as a Panther Life Mentor, a mentor with Educate Tomorrow, and the LGBTQ Mentoring program. She is still in contact with her mentees through these programs and also mentors informally (not through a program) scholars and scholar practitioners nationally and internationally.