Workshop Menu
After reviewing this workshop menu, click here to submit a request. We will follow up with a conversation to help build a workshop that meets the needs of your community.
Adult Workshops
One Time Workshops
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✓ Physical Practice ✓ Empowerment Self-Defense
This introductory physical self-defense training will teach you fundamental blocks and strikes to get away safely. You will learn practical ways to manage distance while using footwork and complete exercises and drills to improve your muscle memory when responding to sudden physical attacks.
The curriculum can be executed in a 2-hour introductory format or in a two part format. For the latter, participants must complete part 1 before advancing to part 2.
You will learn:
Self-defense circle
Levels of danger and threat
Situational Awareness
Safety stance
Distance and footwork
Fundamental blocks and strikes
Use of common objects
Aftercare
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment ✓ Empowerment Self-Defense
✓ Physical Practice (OPTIONAL)
This training will help adults recognize the continuum of stress, which has the potential to result in crisis and violence. You will examine how intersectional identities -- including gender, race, age and more-- shape how you de-escalate situations. Through scenarios and role playing, you will practice setting clear boundaries and using concrete de-escalation skills at your own pace and comfort level.
There is an option to include physical techniques.
You will learn:
De-escalation techniques
Practice scenarios
Safety stance
Aftercare
If including physical techniques, you will learn:
Distance and footwork
Fundamental blocks
Everyday objects for self-defense
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✓ Physical Practice ✓ Empowerment Self-Defense
This workshop addresses concerns around confrontations involving weapons. We will talk openly about the reality of these situations, distinguish between a threat versus an attack, and review basic skills and considerations for survival.
You will learn:
Self defense circle
Levels of danger
Threat versus attack
Safety stance & movement
De-escalation & communication considerations
Blocks & deflections
Defensive strikes
Considerations for defense against blades
Considerations for defense against firearms
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is a communication style that aims to increase understanding and empathy, and is based on the idea that people can be compassionate and address conflicts in a way that reduces harm and increases understanding. With activities throughout, this workshop provides participants with tools for the workplace and beyond that reduce blame and shame and increase community and empathy.
You will learn:
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
At the Center for Anti-Violence Education, we believe that there are opportunities to build towards communities of care before, during, and after hate violence takes place. When it comes to people we know, speaking up against interpersonal violence & harm or oppressive ideologies can be challenging and complex. When sitting across the table from someone, perhaps sharing space, food, or work-- how do we intervene? In this workshop, you'll co-create strategies of care and safety for yourself and for others. You'll explore the connections between oppressive ideologies, and how they show up in our institutions and relationships. You'll learn tools and strategies to create systems of support, and intervene when microaggressions occur.
You will learn:
The four levels of oppression & social location
Boundary setting
Calling-in strategies
Aftercare
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
Research shows that having no community response to hate violence is interpreted as acceptance by the perpetrators, the public and — worse — targeted communities. Communities across the U.S. continue to utilize creative strategies to disrupt and prevent violence, while supporting the healing of impacted community members.
We will explore the range of possibilities for small or large community action to interrupt oppression institutionally and interpersonally while leading with dignity, compassion, and love. We will examine our strengths, relationships, and resources, and how we can apply them towards building beloved communities.
You will learn:
How to “imagine otherwise” toward building beloved communities
Restorative frameworks for navigating conflict
Definitions of different types of power
Resource and relationship mapping tools and strategies
***This workshop is recommended for adults who have previously attended Upstander or De-escalation workshops, either with CAE or another community partner. ***
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
In this workshop, participants will learn more about the history of queer and trans people - both their joy and their continued resistance in the face of targeted violence, from the Stonewall Riots to the Stonewall Protests. There will be interactive discussions around the differences between gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality, and the roots of transphobic oppression.
Tools and strategies for intervening as a bystander and de-escalating conflict will be explored by participants, in order to disrupt real life scenarios.
You will learn:
LGBTQ+ History
Root causes of transphobia
Active bystander intervention strategies
Aftercare
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
Description.
You will learn:
Series
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✓ Physical Practice ✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Empowerment Self-Defense
✓ Community Empowerment
Public transit is an essential part of many of our lives. This curriculum includes verbal de-escalation strategies as well as physical techniques to help you get away safely and help others stay safe.
There are five workshops in this series. These can be taken individually or as a series:
Introduction to Public Transit Safety
Calm Commutes: De-escalation on Public Transit
While You Wait: Addressing Violence at Subway Stations & Bus Stops
Next Stop: Handling Conflict During Your Ride
NY State of Mind: Upstander Perspectives on Public Transit Safety
You will learn:
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✓ Physical Practice ✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Empowerment Self-Defense
This series will provide interactive exercises, socio-cultural contexts, verbal and physical techniques, embodied learning experiences, and resources to allow participants to explore pleasure, consent, and supportive intervention.
Part 1
In this workshop, participants will investigate foundational considerations for safe, consensual sexual exploration as well as verbal skills for recognizing and combating sexual & gender-based violence in our daily lives. This workshop is interactive, offering educational resources while offering a space to develop practices for sexual encounters that honor the agency and safety of all involved parties.
Part 2
We should live in a world where everyone’s autonomy is seen and respected. While it is never your fault if someone brings violence into your life, we want you to feel as empowered as possible to maintain your own sense of autonomy. In this workshop, participants will learn to apply physical self defense skills within intimate and sexual contexts. They will be given the opportunity to practice these skills in a safe, controlled environment.
Part 3
While sexual intimacy is often viewed as a private matter, part of maintaining healthy dynamics often necessitates other supportive relationships. In this workshop, participants will explore signs of unhealthy relationships and abuse as well as strategies to support someone you know who is navigating an unhealthy partnership. Participants will also explore how gender-based and sexual violence impacts our communities and ways to get involved in actively changing that.
You will learn:
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✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
This workshop is for organizations and groups who are new to concepts of alternatives to punishment as a response to harm. This series will allow participants to recognize and explore best practices and options for non-punitive methods of punishment, including restorative justice and accountability practices. Participants will deepen their own awareness, increase knowledge and understanding.
Part 1: Foundations
This workshop provides foundational vocabulary and concepts regarding restorative justice. - - Participants will gain further insight into:
Origins of the carceral system
Origins of restorative justice
Current utilization of formal restorative justice programs
Common associated words, frameworks, and concepts
Part 2: Deepening Our Self-Awareness
Explore personal preconceptions, barriers, and gifts related to restorative approaches.
Participants will:
Participate in a structured listening session using practices from restorative justice circle keeping
Share their observations around current conditions and desired conditions
Unpack notions of restorative justice and accountability
Gain every-day recommendations for practicing restorative approaches
NOTE: This is not an RJ facilitation training. Participants will not be trained to facilitate.
Staff Training and Technical Assistance
We live in a world where violence is more normalized than care, and every day community organizations and individuals are doing direct practice to interrupt all forms of community violence. The need for a space to care for oneself, build community with folks doing similar work, and simply rest, is paramount to the continuation of this vital work. This series provides respite and space for front-line staff to explore storytelling, herbal medicine, meditation, trauma-informed care, writing, the arts, and community care.
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✓ Community Workers
Trauma-informed care is an approach that acknowledges the widespread impact of trauma, how it manifests, and how to resist re-traumatization of ourselves and others. This workshop explores the background of trauma-informed care and provides examples of its utility in various settings. We will discuss hands-on things that can be done to minimize activating events, and address how we use language - about others and with others - in a way that acknowledges trauma and harm.
You will learn:
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✓ Tags?
This session is designed to provide supervisors two areas of support: firstly, tools to manage supervisory boundaries while doing difficult work; secondly, hands-on skills for working with staff who are navigating professional proximity to trauma and harm. This workshop is interactive and provides supervisors with critical relationship building skills, conversation strategies, and a community of support amongst each other.
You will learn:
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✓ Tags?
This training is for adults who work with youth to explore how positive youth development principles and trauma informed care can support in preventing, disrupting and healing from escalated incidents. In addition to covering the basic foundations of positive youth development and trauma informed care, participants will learn CAE’s de-escalation and safety tools. Designed to provide tangible tools so that folks feel both more confident in themselves and invested in their communities, this training uses an empowerment-based and trauma-informed approach.
You will learn:
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✓ Tags?
This training will help adults recognize the continuum of stress, which has the potential to result in crisis and violence. Participants will examine how intersectional identities shape how we de-escalate situations. In this workshop participants will learn strategies and de-escalation skills to keep each other safe and pool our expertise so that everyone walks away with a few more tools. This training will cover verbal and non-verbal communication; helpful phrases and situational awareness. In the portion of this workshop that covers trauma-informed care, participants will discuss causes of agitation and escalation, as well as the nuance of holding someone in a care mindset while de-escalating.
You will learn:
Youth Workshops
Youth-Led Workshops
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✓ Physical Practice ✓ Youth Power ✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Empowerment Self-Defense
In this introductory physical self defense training, young people will learn empowering ways to tap into their voices and bodies to stay safe. It will cover how to manage physical distance and use footwork as well as strikes and blocks.
You will learn:
Self-defense circle
Milling (situational awareness)
Voice work
Safety stance
Distance, footwork, blocks, and strikes
Aftercare
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✓ Youth Power ✓ Verbal Techniques ✓ Community Empowerment
This training will teach young people an array of interpersonal tools to identify and disrupt instances of xenophobia and anti-Blackness. It will cover safe intervention strategies and focus on how to center the needs of the person(s) being targeted.
You will learn:
The difference between being a bystander and an Upstander
The definitions of xenophobia and anti-Blackness
The role of media and social media in promoting prejudice
Active bystander intervention strategies
Aftercare
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✓ Youth Power ✓ Community Empowerment ✓ Verbal Techniques
This training will teach young people what consent is and how it applies across a range of relationships. It includes role-playing and breakout groups to unpack scenarios.
The curriculum can be expanded to discuss elements of a healthy relationship.
You will learn:
Elements of a healthy relationship
The definition of consent
How consent is freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific
Role-play and scenarios
Aftercare
Adult-Led Workshops
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✓ Youth Power ✓ Community Empowerment
Youth voice is one of our most fundamental tools for social change. For young people at the beginning of their journey, and those ready to take the next step, we offer a dual-track in youth organizing and action.
Foundations and History
This workshop lays the groundwork with definitions, examples of youth justice campaigns and changemakers, and identifying issues.
Moving into Action
This workshop goes deeper into the ways young people can engage in their activism and organizing, with visioning activities and next steps of making change.
Series
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✓ Tags?
Description
You will learn:

