To increase the effectiveness and safety of violence prevention workers across the United States, Cure Violence GlobalTM (CVG) and the American Arbitration Association – International Centre for Dispute Resolution Foundation (AAA-ICDR Foundation) are partnering to develop the next generation of trainings for community-based violence intervention. The partnership will enable CVG to utilize the deep expertise and lived experience of its training staff and partner network to produce trainings that make violence prevention programs more effective and more sustainable.

Violence, particularly gun violence, is a national public health epidemic. As communities work to reduce violence, there is a tremendous need for training and support for the community-based organizations doing the work.

The project will develop trainings on street-level conflict resolution, risk reduction, hospital-based violence prevention, trauma care, and site management and will utilize subject matter expertise and advanced training methods. The project will also engage with violence prevention professionals and community stakeholders to identify best practices and address challenges that established and emerging organizations face in this work.

Embedded within these trainings will be enhanced strategies for maintaining worker safety, which will be developed based on the latest understanding of the risks and challenges frontline workers face and responses to these risks.

The project is being led by CVG’s Chief Program Officer, Brent Decker, who has been centrally involved in the design and delivery of CVG training for 20 years. “With this partnership, Cure Violence training will be able to bring new methods and expertise that will make community violence prevention workers more effective. A central part of this project will be engaging with our network of more than 800 violence prevention workers to make sure that the trainings are responsive to their needs.”

“AAA-ICDR Foundation is pleased to support the essential work of Cure Violence Global. For too long, the fields of community violence prevention and alternative dispute resolution have been siloed.  This project will enable communities to benefit from alternative dispute resolution methods and many other new methods for urgently reducing violence in communities,” stated India Johnson, President and CEO of the AAA-ICDR, Chair of the AAA-ICDR Foundation.

Cure Violence Global™ (CVG) is an independent nonprofit organization with the mission of reducing violence globally using evidence-based disease control and behavior change methods. CVG has developed, refined, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the Cure Violence approach, and designed comprehensive and intensive training curricula and technical assistance protocols to guide other organizations in the implementation of this approach. Over the last 25 years, CVG has delivered in-person and online trainings for hundreds of government agencies and community-based organizations. The Cure Violence approach to reducing violence has been demonstrated to be effective in multiple evaluations and has been implemented in more than 100 communities across the globe.

The AAA-ICDR Foundation, is a not-for-profit organization funding projects and proposals that support the prevention and resolution of conflicts by expanding access to alternative dispute resolution. The AAA-ICDR Foundation is affiliated with the American Arbitration Association (AAA), a not-for-profit with a long history and experience in the field of alternative dispute resolution in the US and internationally through its International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR).