Healing Through Restoration and Transformation

This week’s featured story from the new issue of Learning for Justice magazine is from Rosedale, Mississippi, where a community Freedom School model is embracing transformative justice, disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline and illustrating the power of communities to effect change. In place of punitive disciplinary practices, the Rosedale Freedom Project (RFP) is implementing “peace-building circles” and seeking to truly understand and support its students and their interpersonal struggles.

“When there is a serious violation of our community agreements, we bring together those who are affected and those who violated the agreements to discuss what happened,” writes Jeremiah Smith, RFP co-founder and director of programming. “These conversations do not simply restore our community to how it was before. They aim instead to transform our community by addressing the root causes of the violation.”

Read more here.

Toolkit: Peace-Building Circles

Want to learn more about peace-building circles like those being used by the Rosedale Freedom Project in Rosedale, Mississippi (see above)? Check out this new toolkit that walks you through the peace-building circle process, with a goal of strengthening relationships among individuals and connections within communities.

Building Community Is Never a Waste of Time

“We cannot achieve the vision for our communities and ourselves if we do not truly relate to and connect with one another in an authentic way,” writes LFJ Deputy Director Hoyt Phillips in this new article, which includes a list of reminders for keeping relationship-building a focus of your work and life.