Nathaniel Van Wienen ’15
Sycamore, IL
Religion Major
- Program Director for Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), March 2012 – present
- Northfield Reads and Counts College Tutor, September 2010 – May 2014
- Education Fellow at CCCE, January 2014 – May 2014
- ACE participation in RELG 392 (Education, Religion, and Cultural Diversity) which joined RELG 289 (Global Religions in Minnesota) to conduct research with students at Faribault High School in Spring Term 2013
Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) is a community program that offers weekend and day-long trainings in nonviolent conflict resolution. AVP began in 1975 at a New York state prison, where inmates developed workshop trainings to address patterns of violence among local youth; these workshops have since spread to prisons, churches and schools across the country. Students at Carleton begin AVP with a “Basic” workshop on campus, after which they can volunteer at more advanced workshops in the Faribault correctional facility.
Student volunteers bring to the prison their experiences of a younger generation and of various social identities. The inmates consistently remark how much it means to see young people volunteering their time in the facility, and the diversity actually makes for a more successful workshop: sharing a range of experiences with violence enables deeper conversations and valuable reflections. For the students, emotional and personal development in AVP lends a humanized experience to more intellectual discussions back on campus, expanding our understanding of the violence of incarceration and informing that of oppression in other contexts.
One of my most powerful experiences with AVP was at my first time volunteering in Faribault. Every AVP workshop begins with a facilitators meeting on Friday afternoon, before the first session. I knew some of the outside volunteers, but I’d only just met the inmates who would be facilitating with us. In addition to talking through our planned exercises, this meeting creates a safe space to voice hopes and anxieties for the upcoming workshop. I first hesitated to open up in a group of people I hardly knew, but ultimately decided to share with the team my personal concerns about being able to facilitate the workshop. No one was more supportive than the inmates I had just met: they thanked me for sharing, readily gave their own experiences and advice, and continued to check in with me through every session of the workshop. Their support made the difference for me that weekend.
Every workshop is different, and my experience that first time was only my own. But I think other AVP volunteers would share this with me: a renewed confidence in the power of making oneself vulnerable, and the capacity of such honesty to build strong connections with others – especially others typically judged as different from ourselves.