IIRP UK & Ireland held their 2nd Annual Conference, "Restorative Practice: The Way Forward in Salford," in partnership with Salford City Council at Salford City Stadium, on Thursday, June 20, 2013. The conference was attended by 127 people from all over the UK and Ireland.

Katy Hutchison, of British Columbia, Canada, lost her husband when he was brutally beaten to death by teenagers at a party in their neighborhood. Katy would later meet the young man who murdered her husband, and she now advocates and speaks about restorative justice. This moving talk incorporates the restorative lessons she learned from her father, the lessons she tries to teach her own children, and the restorative approach she believes would work better not only for addressing wrongdoing throughout society, but also for changing lives and building community through its use in schools.

Restorative Practices to Resolve Conflict/Build Relationships: Katy Hutchison at TEDxWestVancouverED - YouTube.

This video, in Catalan with English subtitles, portrays a project to implement restorative practices across sectors in the Son Gotleu neighborhood of the city of Palma on the island of Majorca, Spain. It's about 20 minutes long, and includes great video of restorative practices at work and testimonials of adults and children.

This animated video walks through a family group decision making conference (FGDM) from a child's perspective. It could certainly be used to educate people, but I could also see it being very useful to help children understand what to expect about FGC/FGDM conferences.

I've featured IIRP's work with City Springs Public Charter School (K-8) in Baltimore, Maryland, a number of times in the past. Now, in this 6-minute segment from Voice of America's African TV2, reporter Laurel Bowman presents what she found during her visit to the school earlier this spring. Both proactive and responsive practices are highlighted here, including circles and a restorative conference with children young and old.

IIRP, which is based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has been working with the local Bethlehem Area School District the past two years to implement restorative practices at two large  high schools and at other schools in the district. Lehigh Valley PBS TV (Public Broadcasting System) included a five minute segment about the implementation in a recent 30-minute program called Tempo, which focused on the question of bullying in schools. The segment includes interviews with IIRP instructor Mary Jo Hebling and examples of how restorative circles are being used by teachers in classes.

This video is from American Humane, which formerly housed the National Center on Family Group Decision Making, now a part of the Kempe Center. The video describes the Family Group Decision Making process, a restorative practice for engaging families to find their own solutions to problems.

For this Sunday's video I'm posting a short video of youth leader Edward Ward's testimony during the Senate's "School to Prison Pipeline" hearing convened by Senator Dick Durbin Wednesday afternoon. Ward is 20-years-old and the organization he represents, Blocks Together from Chicago, is a member of the Dignity in Schools campaign,which had a heavy presence at the hearing.

Here's an edited version of a longer film about Rozelle Primary School, which Terry O'Connell mentioned in last week's podcast about his trip to Zimbabwe. The school has been using restorative practices for nearly 10 years.

What are Restorative Practices? from Christin Clark on Vimeo with students from Philadelphia, teacher Neil Geyette, formerly of West Philadelphia High School, and IIRP trainer Steve Korr.

Here's a great little video just put out by San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) letting children and teens talk for themselves about their feelings and reactions to the implementation of restorative circles and restorative practices in their schools. The caption under the video on youtube reads:

"SFUSD has rolled out a District-wide implementation of Restorative Practices in dozens of schools. Restorative Practices is based on the assumption that students respond better when things are done WITH them rather than TO them. Students exposed to Restorative Practices reflect on how they feel regarding the use of Restorative Circle in the classroom."

Here's a truly lovely video of restorative justice pioneer Mark Yantzi of Canada speaking about the inspiration for some of the first victim-offender meetings as a way of resolving a series of crimes - the notorious Elmira case. Yantzi is director of Community Justice Initiatives.

I love Yantzi saying at the very end of this 8-minute talk, "Crime is something that harms people, but if in the addressing of crime we can make things better for everyone, we've really been restorative in what we do."

This week I'll be featuring different links related to IIRP's newest project, Building Campus Community. This project helps campuses apply the full spectrum of restorative practices at the college and university level, beginning specifically with residence halls. Restorative practices gives resident advisors (RA's) a wide range of tools for both building community proactively and responding to harm and wrongdoing when it occurs.

By way of introduction, here are two videos from administrators and RA's at the University of Vermont, a campus currently in its second year of RP implementation for residence halls across the entire campus.

Here's a video showing a multi-faceted Restorative Juvenile Justice Project in Peru. People involved in a wide variety of aspects of the project have been interviewed and there's some striking footage of the country. Jean Schmitz, director of the Latin American Institute of Restorative Practices, an IIRP affiliate, appears briefly. This 14-minute video is in Spanish with English subtitles.

From Nova Studios web site:

Estamos incrementando nuestros esfuerzos en todo Latinoamérica para hacer frente a las consecuencias sociales de la pobreza y la violencia. Las prácticas restaurativas proporcionan una perspectiva que resulta atractiva para muchos de los que están trabajando con el objetivo de reunir a las personas para que resuelvan sus problemas y así, transformar la naturaleza de la sociedad.

Este artículo de dos partes escrito por Joshua Wachtel discute cómo es que los individuos en Latinoamérica están implementando las prácticas restaurativas en sus organizaciones, escuelas y comunidades. La Parte uno del artículo aborda los casos de Nicaragua, Panamá y Colombia. La Parte dos habla sobre México y Perú y hace referencia al trabajo realizado en Brasil.

Throughout Latin America there are growing efforts to confront the social consequences of poverty and violence. Restorative practices provides an outlook that is appealing to many who are working to bring people together to resolve problems and transform the nature of society.  This two-part article discusses how individuals in Latin America are implementing restorative practices in their organizations, schools and communities. Part one discusses Nicaragua, Panama and Colombia. Part two talks about Mexico and Peru and references work in Brazil.

View the conference schedule and presentation materials (where provided).

West Philadelphia High School has undergone a transformation. It has been on Pennsylvania’s “Persistently Dangerous Schools” list for six years, but the implementation of restorative practices and strong leadership, headed by principal Saliyah Cruz, have made a huge difference. The culture and climate of the school have improved significantly, violent and serious incidents have plummeted, and rates of discipline procedures such as suspensions and expulsions have decreased dramatically.