AVP Maine

Nine men attended and graduated this men’s advanced workshop. The nine included Gary N.  from the “outside”.  William R. joined us as inside facilitator. Kathy R and Sue R were the outside facilitators with Basil R as an apprentice facilitator.

The theme on Friday might was community building  and consensus. This was a group in which seven of the men knew each other from the Basic workshop  they had done a couple months ago. Most of the men were involved and active for a Friday night

They said they were a little baffled by the adjective name introduction with a gesture, though it was different it was also fun and yet uncomfortable.

Saturday morning started with a check in. The focus of this session was transforming power and choosing a topic.  The gathering was “a goal I am working on that I hope this workshop will help me with….”.  They said this was a good way to loosen up. It was a little invasive for some of the men, however.

Sunday afternoon was spent on Role plays and affirmation posters. It was somewhat confusing when some men decided to sign the affirmation posters while the role plays were going on. We finally asked that all men pay attention which they reluctantly did. The role plays were pretty generic and very short.

The men wanted more input on what to do for the role plays. It was torture for some of them. They didn’t give themselves much space to practice conflict dialogue. One thing they said was that the debrief was drawn out too much. They kept giving the same answers over and over.

The format resembled a workshop, starting with a Gathering question: “What can I do for AVP Maine?”

The past year small group has done 5 workshops with men, 3 with women, and 3 support groups (mini workshops)

Our next workshops are as follows:

October—Advanced, Men’s, Pat and Sue B

November—T4T, Men’s

Dec., Jan., Feb—Men’s Basics

March through August—women’s unit

The pattern is to be “2 Basic, 1 Adv., 1 T4T, 2 Basic” then switch back to the other unit.

ROSC has granted us operating funds.  The domain name has been renewed.

We concluded by offering our hopes (vision) for AVP in the coming year. Some ideas included resuming work at Maine State Prison. Almost all of them depend on acquiring more trained facilitators. Pat expressed some frustration that finding an acceptable date to meet was so difficult, but no one had a clear idea of their calendar for Summer 2016, so we will try to agree on a summer date when the time draws nearer.