Advoz Education & Training
Take a training to volunteer or to increase your personal and professional capacity to change conflict and harm into conversation.
Intro to Conflict, Communication & Culture Training
This experiential nine-hour workshop builds on participants’ existing wisdom with language, concepts and skills for healthy conflict resolution and restorative practices, a prerequisite for all other Advoz trainings.
Restorative Justice Victim-Offender Conferencing Training
This interactive training equips you to facilitate restorative conferencing dialogue involving those impacted by harm and crime. You’ll also better understand the local systems that support this dialogue.
Basic Mediation Training
This training prepares you to help people listen and resolve their own disputes using effective communication skills and the facilitative mediation method. It prepares you to be a community mediator with Advoz, including ethical considerations for the process in Pennsylvania.
Circle Process Training
Learn to facilitate a Circle Process to build community and address tough issues and harmful incidents in groups of 5-20 people. This form draws from indigenous traditions of inclusive and structured group dialogue.
Divorce and Custody Family Mediation Training
This three-day training walks through the elements of mediating conversations for couples going through divorce, custody and co-parenting negotiations.
Other Trainings
Advoz provides additional trainings including:
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- Mediation/Facilitator Continuing Education
- Restorative Conflict Coaching Engagement for Trauma-Informed Leaders (RCE)
- Restorative Schools: Practices for Building Educational Community, Learning and Discipline
I’ve sat through a lot of trainings and unlike most of them, there wasn’t a minute when I thought, “what am doing here?” This was an effective, relevant training!
– Course Participant from Winter 2022
Conflict, Communication & Culture: Advoz Introductory Training*
January 22-24, 2024, 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM – Virtual*
* Required for qualification in all other Advoz trainings.
Conflict is a healthy part of relationships, teams, and the community. How do we make it an opportunity?
This experiential nine-hour course builds on participants’ existing wisdom to introduce language, concepts, and skills of healthy conflict resolution and restorative practices. Sessions are held either in-person or using the interactive capabilities of Zoom video conferencing, so expect to be energized and empowered to increase restorative practices in your work and life and to be prepared for Advoz’s intermediate courses. This course includes:
- Conflict & Harm, Introduction to Concepts and Skills
- Defining “Healthy Conflict?”
- Your own Conflict Styles Assessment and Reflection
- Third Party Collaboration – How Mediation and Restorative Practices are different from other approaches
- Culture, Inclusion & Harm/Trauma
- Harm & Trauma Awareness in Facilitation
- Working with Bias, Mainstream & Margins in Conflict
- Communication and Restorative Listening Practices
- Power of Listening – Mindful Listening and Blocks to Listening
- Naming and Affirming Emotions – Empathic Listening
- Facilitating Clarity – Interests vs. Positions
CLEs are available for PA-registered attorneys including 2 ethics credits for working with diversity and trauma of clients and colleagues.
Register for this training by January 7, 2024
“The model was instantly applicable…to all kinds of situations.”
“I liked the variety of participants, role playing opportunities, hearing about others’ experiences and cases that worked. The manual was very useful and will be helpful to review before meetings with clients.“
– Course Participants from 2024
1-to-1 Restorative Conflict Engagement for Trauma-Informed Leaders (CCC 2.0)
Friday, October 4, 2024, at 9 am - 4:30 pm
*Advoz CCC Intro training is required for this course
Want to facilitate restorative conflict resolution in one-on-one coaching and supervisory situations? This course provides a framework and practice to prepare you to lead more effectively in your personal, professional, and community work.
The experiential 7-hour workshop builds on basic awareness and skills of restorative conflict approaches with a model and practice for engaging restoratively with someone in conflict. Designed especially for leaders, supervisors and coaches, the workshop uses the framework of Dr. Bruce Perry’s 3 R’s of “neurosequential” trauma-informed engagement to:
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- Regulate – de-escalating with the other,
- Relate – building an empathic connection,
- Reason – helping them to discern options,
- Restore – making a plan to address the conflict/harm.
The training concludes with an opportunity to practice the process with a fellow participant, to experience it as a participant and to get feedback on your work with reflection to apply it in your environment.
This course requires the above Conflict, Communication & Culture training as a pre-requisite. Contact chris@advoz.org with any questions or requests for exemption.
Register for October, 4, 2024, CCC 2.0 by September 19, 2024
“I appreciated the sense of community and the opportunity to learn from one another.
The level of respect for everyone was evident.”
– Course Participant from Winter 2022
Circle Process Training
Note: This is an intermediate training requiring experience in Advoz’s Mediation & Restorative Justice programs, Conflict, Communication & Culture, or an equivalent.
Learn to convene a Circle Process to build community and address tough issues and harmful incidents in groups of 5-20 people. Drawing from indigenous traditions of inclusive and structured group process, the Circle Process requires facilitator skills both to conduct and trust the group’s capacity for addressing its needs and challenges. The curriculum will cover the following:
- Uses of Circle Process
- Opening the Circle
- Using a Talking Piece
- Trusting the Circle Process
- Questions to Ask
- Closing the Circle
Circle Process training coming soon Spring 2025!
Please contact chris@advoz.org with any questions.
* Courses require Advoz’s Conflict, Communication and Culture training before intermediate courses in Restorative Justice, Mediation and Circle Process. Please contact the course coordinator with any questions.
“The breakout rooms wherein we were able to practice the techniques helped to infuse understanding at a deeper level.”
– Course Participant from Winter 2022
Restorative Justice Victim-Offender Conferencing Training
Please contact chris@advoz.org with any questions.
Note: Conflict, Communication & Culture (above) is required for qualification in this Advoz training.
When people cause harm to others, who is responsible? And how might they make things right?
A growing number of advocates, researchers and public servants from across the political spectrum recognize the power of restorative approaches to harm and crime that involve those harmed (victims), those who’ve harmed (offenders) and the community around them to make things right. Restorative justice is a process of accountability and healing for those involved in harm with reported high satisfaction by an average of 90% of those participating.
Advoz has been coordinating restorative justice in Lancaster County and beyond for 25 years and seeks to equip volunteers to facilitate, primarily with youth who’ve caused harm and those they have harmed.
This interactive online training equips you to facilitate restorative “conferencing” dialogue and to understand the local systems in which that dialogue takes place. In sessions built around role playing the successive elements of this process, participants will learn:
- The restorative victim-offender conferencing process
- Juvenile court and probation systems
- Victim rights and needs
- Confidentiality and ethics
- Communication and listening skills
- Online facilitation techniques
The Advoz Training Working with Conflict, Communication & Culture is required to complete this training. You will need to register for each separately.
Restorative Practices Victim-Offender Conferencing Training coming Spring 2025!
Please contact krista@advoz.org with any questions.
“I enjoyed going through each stage of the process before putting it all together.”
“I liked…the opportunity to role play on both sides of the table; to reflect on feelings, strong points and areas of concern.”
“I enjoyed how well rounded and knowledgeable the coaches were in their understanding of the mediation process.”
– Course Participants from 2024
Basic Mediation Training
5Note: The Conflict, Communication & Culture course is required to take this Advoz training.
Would you like to help others and yourself resolve conflict constructively? This training prepares you to use effective communication skills and the facilitative mediation structure to help people listen and resolve their own disputes, including ethical considerations of using the process in Pennsylvania.
Multiple role plays enable you to practice your new mediator skills and leave you more prepared to handle conflict both in the workplace and in your personal life.
- Tuesday, January 28: 1 pm to 5 pm (Virtual Zoom)
- Wednesday, January 29: 1 pm to 5 pm (Virtual Zoom)
- Friday, January 31: 9 am to 5 pm (In-person)
- Saturday, February 1: 9 am – 5 pm (In-person
CLEs are available for attorneys including 1 ethics credit.
* Please contact us at advozadmin@advoz.org or click this link for scholarship information.
Register for this training by January 15, 2025
Please contact chris@advoz.org with any questions.
“I appreciated the balance of discussion and practice, a wise use of class time.”
“I really appreciated the option to mix up the role play groups so I could experience all my classmates and trainers; the dedication, expertise and positivity of trainers; the level of trust Advoz places in its volunteers.”
– Course Participants from 2024
Divorce and Custody Family Mediation Training
Make a difference for families going through a critical and often traumatic life-transition. This three-day training walks through the elements of mediating conversations for couples going through divorce, custody and co-parenting negotiations. Trainees are expected to have had Basic Mediation Training (30+ hours). In this advanced training, you will learn and practice:
- Divorce Mediation Process
- Helping Parties with Assets and Property Division
- Navigating Child Support
- Helping Parties with Parenting Arrangements
For those who are using the training for professional development purposes, CLEs are available for attorneys.
NOTE: This training is scheduled periodically. Please contact chrisw@advoz.org if you are interested in being notified.
Expand with your organization
Want your whole team to go to the next level of collaboration?
Experience an engaging training that builds your team and addresses conflict constructively.
Advoz tailors these and other workshops for organizations to increase use of healthy conflict resolution and restorative practices.
Testimony from one organization:
Advoz staff members worked with HDC staff to develop the training, gathering information about the organization, the roles of the staff members who would be attending the training, common conflicts that we deal with, and our organizational values. The training was very effective. Using break-out rooms to offer time to talk and practice skills in pairs provided safe opportunities for learning and team building. Workbooks and a power point presented the information clearly, and trauma-informed principles were incorporated into the teaching. Three very knowledgeable presenters offered a variety of voices and styles, which helped to keep the sessions engaging. The trainers were open to feedback and suggestions, which helped to make it as effective as possible.
The training was valuable to our staff. We will continue to work with Advoz to bring these important skills to our staff with the ultimate goal of providing the highest quality service to the individuals who choose to live in HDC communities.
Sincerely,
Debbie Gable, VP of Residential Services
Housing Development Corp. Mid-Atlantic
Contact chris@advoz.org for these and other training inquiries.
Create change. Investing in your own growth today!
Participating in Advoz education and training will help you with your own conflicts and to create positive change in your community, workplace and home. You can make a difference. Hope is possible. Let us guide you!
“Advoz training has the power to give you to tools to change the world around you.”
– Advoz Advocate
Join this Story of Dialogue and Healing
We believe there are always restorative possibilities.
And we’ll work with you to find them.