Worcester’s Center for Nonviolent Solutions to Honor Local Peacemakers

Monday, March 25, 2013

GoLocalWorcester Lifestyle Team

The Center for Nonviolent Solutions (CNVS) will hold its Annual Meeting this Tuesday, March 26 in the Saxe Room at the Worcester Public Library, where the organization will present awards for local peacemakers working to change the community.

The meeting’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Ulric Johnson, an organizer, presenter, consultant and trainer on gang violence prevention and youth leadership development. Founder and director of TAGV: Teens Advocating a Global Vision AKA Teens Against Gang Violence, a peer leadership, youth and family program. Dr. Johnson’s talk will focus on diversity awareness and social change.

This year, CNVS is presenting three Peacemaker awards.

T. Lee Associates, an organization dedicated to “Creating Positive Change Through Action”, with work based on Kingian Nonviolence that has provided trainings in bullying prevention for the past 17 years, will receive the Organizational Peacemaker award.

The Community Peacemaker award goes to Patti Ryan, a teacher at Goddard Academy at Sullivan Middle School whose leadership and commitment has been instrumental in helping CNVS’ conflict transformation work contribute toward a culture of peace at that school.

Sean Minahan, a Clark student who has been a steadfast volunteer with the CNVS Conflict and Cooperation course will receive the Young Peacemaker Award.

The Center for Nonviolent Solutions was co-founded in October of 2009 with a mission to provide education and resources to help people in the Worcester area to understand nonviolence and peacemaking as a way of life and to reject the use of violence in resolving conflict. During the past year, CNVS presented programs and assisted with curriculum infusion for students in City of Worcester middle and high schools in the south quadrant of the City. Programs emphasized skills in peace-building, communication, healthy relationships, peer mediation, anger management, and conflict transformation. CNVS also provides free community mediation services by trained and experienced mediators. This fall CNVS will provide to 5-12 K teachers a professional development institute on nonviolent movements in the modern world. Applications welcome.

The CNVS is located in the Worcester Friends Meeting House at 901 Pleasant Street in Worcester. For more information call 774-641-1566.