October 23, 2021
CTK Parish Hall
9am - 12pm

Note: We need at least ten (10) participants to host this retreat. 

Dot Dobbins

Dot attended first AVP workshop in 2004 and became trained as a facilitator in 2005. She has facilitated many Basic, Advanced and Training for Facilitator workshops since that time. Attending National AVP Conferences in Long Island New York, Minnesota, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Denver as well as International Conferences in Dublin, Ireland and Katmandu, Nepal. In 2021 participating remotely in the National and International Conferences held online due to Covid 19.

Dot lives in Nashville, TN. She is a widow with one daughter and four grandsons. She is a retired lawyer having practiced law for 42 years.

Trina Baum

Trina’s first experience with the Alternatives to Violence Project was in November of 2006 when she took the Basic Workshop.  In 2009, she took the Advanced workshop and then in 2011, she was trained to be a facilitator.  In 2013, she was an apprentice facilitator for three workshops with men and women from the Somali community in Nashville.  She probably learned more from this experience than the participants did.  Over the years, she has facilitated many community workshops in Nashville and two in Atlanta and has done work at Joelton Middle School, Margaret Allen Middle School, at the Bordeaux Library and at Preston Taylor Afterschool Program.  From 2018-2020, she and other facilitators were part of The Academy, which was a program in the Davidson County Women’s Jail where they offered weekly sessions of Alternatives to Violence.  Before the pandemic shut volunteers out of the jails, she and the facilitation team had the pleasure of working with many incarcerated women, graduating over 50 from the program.  In 2018, she and other facilitators took part in an AVP Advanced course in Trauma Resiliency.  Then in 2020, they were able to join the BEST program (Building Entrepreneurs for Success in Tennessee) at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women).  The focus of this series of sessions broadened to include a focus on the effects of trauma in addition to looking at violence in the lives of the women.  Unfortunately, this program was also cut short due to the pandemic.
 
During COVID, Trina continued to correspond with the women who were part of BEST and to write articles for the newspaper, which was distributed in the jail by The Academy.  She also took many online training workshops and helped facilitate an online Basic workshop with AVP- South Carolina. She is looking forward to the day when she and the facilitation team can go back to the jail and the prison to work with incarcerated people. Every workshop that we do helps us to walk a path of peace. Violence is vey pervasive in our culture; to learn to deal with conflict in a different way is a lifelong quest.

Laura Howell

Laura was introduced to Alternatives to Violence when enrolling in the Basic workshop in 2017.  She followed with the Advanced Course in 2018 and completed the Facilitator Course in 2019. Prior to the 2020 shut down, she was able to facilitate one Basic course with adults in Nashville. She also facilitated students with a Margaret Allen Middle School Pier Group (Peace Teams) empowering youth groups through conflict resolution. After the reopening of schools, she is facilitating a new group of piers with Margaret Allen Middle School. 

Laura currently lives in Franklin, TN. She is retired after 20 years teaching. She has two married daughters and three granddaughters that all live in the Nashville Area.
 

AVP-USA, Inc. – Alternatives to Violence Project (avpusa.org)