Values over Violence

Values over Violence

The collaboration between several organizations in both urban and suburban communities in Greater Boston through Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries seeks to reduce violence throughout the area. We work with an innovative approach that was first pioneered by ESPERE with Fundación para la Reconciliación in the gang-ravaged ghettos of Bogotá, Colombia, and has since spread to more than 15 Latin American countries. Through our partnership with Forgiveness International, we seek to bring this work to anglophone North America. The ESPERE materials have received a UNESCO prize and other international honors for their proven track record in reducing violence. The premise of this approach is based on the well-founded belief that social violence is a result of many factors found in underserved communities, including poverty, unemployment and a general sense of helplessness about the future. Violence, immediate, structural or cultural, is not limited to any one population sector.


Values over Violence is a program to foster dignity through a civic culture based on forgiveness and reconciliation. It trains youth and adults to examine their emotions, learn to identify events which trigger anger and revenge, and look at choices about how to handle these events. We focus on the need to address the emotional issues stemming from violence, felt by victims, perpetrators, and the community. Without emotional and spiritual healing, it becomes impossible to step beyond violence and chart a new direction. Participants are trained to help move persons from the onset of violence through possibilities of forgiveness and degrees of reconciliation toward constructive civil engagement.


We are one of the proud recipients of the Cummings Foundation $30mil Grant Program

 

Other grants received from:


 

Workshops through the Schools of Forgiveness & Reconciliation deal with the following topics (with links to Boston Praise Radio interviews below):

Introduction – (Rodney Petersen, PhD, 1/24/17)

Manual on Forgiveness

1. Violence & Motivation –  (Robert Lewis, 1/31/17) 

The motivation for this work comes with our experience of violence which may be personal, communal, or structural, and cultural. Violence tends to promote a violent reaction. It shapes our sense of meaning, pattern of social relations and feelings of security.

2. From Darkness to Light – (D.A.C, 2/7/17) 

The purpose of this module is to focus us on the effects of aggression on the emotions, thought, and behavior and to determine the consequences of rage and pain on physical and emotional health. Rage is not, in itself, good or bad; it is an emotion that appears without our being able to control it. What is important is that we know what we are going to do with it and the kind of behavior we are going to have when we feel rage.

3. I Decide to Forgive – (Larry Ellison, 2/14/17) 

An aggression to our person is an occasion for revenge or forgiveness. Forgiveness is presented as the best alternative to overcome resentment and hatred provoked by aggression. It is important to forgive because rancor and rage weaken me physically and emotionally. Forgiveness allows me to discharge the negative image of the offender that constantly makes me a martyr, reminding me of a negative event in my life. We should differentiate between what is Forgiveness and what is not.

4. I See with New Eyes – (Mary Murphy, 2/21/17) 

The objective of this module is to promote compassion and empathy with the offender, facilitating the building of a new narrative of the offense to recognize the similarities and differences of each person with the others around them.

5. I Understand My Offender – (Rodney Petersen, PhD, 2/28/17)

The purpose of this chapter is to expand our concept of compassion to include the narratives that guide our lives. It is to understand the behavior of the offender as a result to issues in his or her own life. The exercises in this chapter are meant to help understand the different perspectives that have been held about the offense.

6. I Break Chains & Cleanse Pain – (Rodney Petersen, PhD, 3/7/17) 

The objective of this module is to establish the ideal conditions that will allow the eventual encounter with the offender. This is a module of transition from forgiveness to reconciliation. Forgiveness is an individual choice; reconciliation is a choice to be made with an “other.” The ESPERE schools suggest possible paths for reconciliation: at a distance, closer but with a prudent separation, or a tighter reconciliation where bonds of love and fraternity are possible.

Manual on Reconciliation

7. I Build Truth – (Rodney Petersen, PhD, 4/4/17) 

Truth and communication are two basic elements of the reconciliation process. It takes the work of both parties to determine the different versions that are held concerning the offense and the process of forgiveness and reconciliation work that can be seen to be favorable when the strategies of clear and assertive communication enable the reconstruction of the facts.

8. I Promote Justice – (Rodney Petersen, PhD, 4/4/17) 

The promotion of justice is presented in this module as a necessary condition for the whole process of reconciliation. A person, community or society that wishes to advance in the work of reconciliation should promote justice. In this material the work of restorative justice is presented as process where achieving justice is more than punishing a guilty individual. In restorative justice both the offended person and this offender must be restored.

9. I Make a Pact 

In addition to promoting the building of truth and promotion of justice, ESPERE also suggested the need to make pacts (or covenants, contracts or constitutions) once people, neighborhoods or societies move forward in the process of reconciliation.

10. I Celebrate Memory 

The objective of this module is the restoration of the memory of individual and collective events as a way or re-establishing the meaning of identity and promoting restoration for the prevention of new harmful acts. It is to promote the practice of celebration as a fundamental ritual to strengthen the commitment to living together and to a new life.


 

Resources:

1. Schools of Forgiveness and Reconciliation (English Version) Constructing Peace

2. Healing the Wounds of History – ESPERE

3. Fundación para la Reconciliación

Workshops are typically 10 weeks in length and meet for 2-3 hours weekly. Other arrangements are possible.


Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries Awarded $75,000 Cummings Grant

Newton nonprofit receives three years of funding from Cummings Foundation

 

 

Newton, June 02, 2023 – Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries is one of 150 local nonprofits that will share in $30 million through Cummings Foundation’s major annual grants program. The Newton-based organization was selected from a total of 630 applicants during a competitive review process. It will receive $75,000 over the next three years.

 

Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries (CMM) is Greater Boston’s oldest interfaith social action network. CMM’s mission is to mobilize congregations and communities across economic, religious, racial, and ethnic boundaries so that, in partnership, we can work more effectively for a just and peaceful society and for spiritual growth and interfaith understanding.

 

“Data, gathered by the Boston Police Department, points to serious violence highly concentrated in Roxbury among other areas between 2018 to 2022,” says Sophia Bishop-Rice, CMM’s Executive Director. “CMM provides violence prevention workshops through its Values over Violence (VoV) program, to the Boston Public Schools and beyond, with its youth-aimed, two-generation approach in reducing anger, aggression, and violence. This is needed now more than ever in the public health emergency of city-wide violence as seen in the headlines. We have also successfully offered VoV workshops at the Blackstone Elementary School in Roxbury with tremendous outcomes such as attitudes and behavior changes in their most challenging students.

 

“We are grateful for the Cummings Foundation grant which will allow us to run a summer leadership academy at the Blackstone Elementary School for middle school youth, focused on the skills taught in Values over Violence, as well as those beyond.”

 

The Cummings $30 Million Grant Program primarily supports Massachusetts nonprofits that are based in and serve Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk counties.

 

Through this place-based initiative, Cummings Foundation aims to give back in the areas where it owns commercial property. Its buildings are all managed, at no cost to the Foundation, by its affiliate, Cummings Properties. This Woburn-based commercial real estate firm leases and manages 11 million square feet of debt-free space, the majority of which exclusively benefits the Foundation.

 

“The way the local nonprofit sector perseveres, steps up, and pivots to meet the shifting needs of the community is most impressive,” said Cummings Foundation executive director Joyce Vyriotes. “We are incredibly grateful for these tireless efforts to support people in the community and to increase equity and access to opportunities.”

 

The majority of the grant decisions were made by about 90 volunteers. They worked across a variety of committees to review and discuss the proposals and then, together, determine which requests would be funded. Among these community volunteers were business and nonprofit leaders, mayors, college presidents, and experts in areas such as finance and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

 

“It would not be possible for the Foundation to hire the diversity and depth of expertise and insights that our volunteers bring to the process,” said Vyriotes. “We so appreciate the substantial time and thought they dedicated toward ensuring that our democratized version of philanthropy results in equitable outcomes that will really move the needle on important issues in local communities.”

 

The Foundation and volunteers first identified 150 organizations to receive three-year grants of up to $225,000 each. The winners included first-time recipients as well as nonprofits that had previously received Cummings grants. Twenty-five of this latter group of repeat recipients were then selected by a volunteer panel to have their grants elevated to 10-year awards ranging from $300,000 to $1 million each.

 

This year’s grant recipients represent a wide variety of causes, including housing and food insecurity, workforce development, immigrant services, social justice, education, and mental health services. The nonprofits are spread across 46 different cities and towns.

 

Cummings Foundation has now awarded $480 million to greater Boston nonprofits. The complete list of this year’s 150 grant winners, plus nearly 1,500 previous recipients, is available at www.CummingsFoundation.org.

 

About Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries

CMM was established in 1966 by faith communities to address poverty, housing, and racial justice in Boston, and to link urban and suburban communities in just, transformative partnerships, CMM has tackled the most pressing issues facing our communities for more than 50 years, working to build Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community. CMM’s members include congregations, community partner organizations, educational institutions, and individuals around the Greater Boston Area. That is why CMM is NOT registered as a religious organization, but rather, it is registered and operates as a 501c3 COMMUNITY organization. It takes a village. Learn more at www.coopmet.org

 

About Cummings Foundation

Woburn-based Cummings Foundation, Inc. was established in 1986 by Joyce and Bill Cummings of Winchester, MA and has grown to be one of the largest private foundations in New England. The Foundation directly operates its own charitable subsidiaries, including New Horizons retirement communities, in Marlborough and Woburn, and Cummings Health Sciences, LLC. Additional information is available at www.CummingsFoundation.org.

 

Contact: Sophia Bishop-Rice, Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries, (978) 645-7861, sophiarice@coopmet.org

Contact: Alison Harding, Cummings Foundation, 781-932-7093, aeh@cummings.com


“Against the irrationality of violence, we promote the irrationality of reconciliation.”

“Political culture of forgiveness and reconciliation: unavoidable challenge for human survival.”