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Bringing Restorative Interventions to Everyone

Individuals

 

Justice is what love looks like in public.

~Dr. Cornel West

 

Our Beloved Community!

How Can I Participate in BRITE CO?

BRITE CO is an organization that is bolstered by our incredible volunteers who support our restorative interventions in many different ways!

We offer extensive training to all volunteers who help support our restorative justice programs and interventions. Our training begins with a 2 hour training on the fundamentals of restorative practices and continues through a 16 hour facilitator training. Click below to read more about the training opportunities available to BRITE Collaborative’s volunteers!

  • Anyone can join us for our Restorative Practices Orientation which is offered 6 times a year (virtually). Here you get an opportunity to learn more about volunteering with BRITE CO and/or how to bring restorative practices to YOUR community!

    Register here!

  • Community Members are essential in restorative justice. Speaking from personal perspective to identify how the broader community is affected by crime, BRITE CO's community members ensure that the reparative agreements in the Responsible Person’s contract are fair to the participants and the community.

    Learn more here!

  • Committed volunteers become facilitators by learning and practicing how to lead a restorative justice conference. Facilitators empower those affected by and responsible for crime and harm.

    Learn more here!

  • BRITE CO offers regular training opportunities to deepen your restorative skills and opportunities to connect with our community!

    Opportunities include: Restorative Conversations, Reflective Statements & Reframing, Connection Circles, Learning Restorative Justice Through Games, Cultural Responsiveness in Restorative Practices & More!

    Check out the training calendar here!

All trainings are in compliance with the Colorado Restorative Justice Practitioner Guidelines adopted by the Colorado Restorative Justice Coordinating Council and endorsed by the Colorado Coalition for Restorative Justice Practices.

Additionally, our trainings integrate best practices from the Restorative Rainbow Alliance. It outlines and describes best practices and norms for LGBTQ+ affirmation restorative justice and practices.

Restorative Approaches to Your Parenting

 

You Aren’t Alone

We can help you to build resilience in your family, deepen relationships with your children while supporting you as you cultivate the family and community you have always wanted.

 
 

Join Us For This 6 Part Series

BRITE Collaborative can bring this very unique opportunity to your own community. Spend 12 hours learning how to incorporate more restorative and supportive approaches to your parenting.

Currently we are offering this series to groups and organizations. So please reach out if you are interested. In the future, we will offer this series to individual parents, please sign up for our email to stay up to date with the latest offering. You can also email parenting@britecollab.org to let us know you are an interested in individual training.

Designed for parents, guardians and caregivers of children of all ages, it aims to be a shared, supportive, participatory experience inviting us all to look at parenting through a restorative lens.

Restorative Approaches to Parenting is centered around the 5Rs: RELATIONSHIP, RESPECT, RESPONSIBILITY, REPAIR and REINTEGRATION which are woven throughout the series. Each workshop includes a community support circle and focuses on a different aspect of parenting restoratively.

Interested in Becoming a More Restorative Parent?

Workshops will focus on these 6 primary areas to build your restorative parenting skills.

  1. Overview of Restorative Approaches

  2. Relationship Building + Restorative Conversations

  3. Owning our Mistakes + ‘Doing Sorry’

  4. Power Struggles, Boundaries + Expectations

  5. Sibling Rivalry + Peer Conflict

  6. Navigating Challenges + When Things Go Wrong

We want to hear from you! Please get in touch to discuss how to begin this life changing journey!

Restorative Workplaces

 

Creating Healthier Workplaces

When companies bring opportunities to use restorative interventions at work, employees are more satisfied!

 
 

Create the Culture YOU Want

With the help of BRITE Collaborative you can create a work environment where the people experience higher rates of job satisfaction and retention is increased. Using restorative practices provides a container to identify and address challenges with equity, power dynamics, and poor team communication.

 

Transforming Culture Together

People work, live, and play together better in environments that support healthy relationships. Various community agencies and workplaces partner with BRITE Co. to assess their organizational values and identify how to catalyze and sustain a restorative culture. BRITE Co. builds capacity in conflict resolution practices and proactive relationship building tools through trainings that promote respect and relationships, with practical skills that enhance responsibility and repair.

 
 

Restorative Offerings Can Include: 

  • Training for all staff in how to use and lead Connection Circles

  • Training in Restorative Conversations to Address One-on-One Conflict

  • Practice with Advanced Skills for Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

  • Collaborative Designing of a Restorative Process that Responds to Your Organization’s Needs

  • Ongoing Coaching and Consultation

  • Referrals to BRITE Collaborative to address significant harm through a restorative process

 
“It’s just amazing to have a structured framework for working through issues with my co-workers.”
— Participant in Restorative Workplace Training

Thinking About How Bringing Restorative Practices to Your Workplace?

Whether you want to simply discuss the possibilities or are ready to set your training dates, we’re ready to hear from you!

Recent Clients

Additional Trainings:

 
Schools
Law Enforcement
Volunteers & Individuals
 

Restorative practices in schools

 

Supporting Teachers

Restorative tools and interventions can help create a safer, more connected classroom. We want to help you!

 

A Practical Approach for Training Educators in School Districts Across the Nation

 

Build a Restorative School Community

Our “Relationships to Resilience” framework is for teachers, administrators, students and school resource officers (SRO’s). BRITE Co.’s training offers introductory to advanced skills training along the informal to formal continuum of restorative interventions. The “Relationships to Resilience” framework supports multi tiered approaches to positive behavior interventions and support structures. While reinforcing social emotional learning approaches and exploration.

All our training is available remotely via video, in-person or hybrid. BRITE Co. can provide introductory training with a minimum of 2-8 hours. Additionally, we offer extended multi-year partnership opportunities for implementation.

During the 2021-2022 school year, BRITE Co. has identified the theme of “Reintegration” as an important need for a whole school community. At every level of training, we support trainees with using restorative skills to meet the need for reintegration with self, peers, and the school community.

Many schools and districts seek methods to cultivate a more inclusive school community to help all students and staff feel a sense of safety and belonging, and support academic success. Restorative practices provide a range of tools along the prevention-intervention continuum with the ultimate goal of creating a more respectful, inclusive learning environment. These tools do not function well in isolation; they must be implemented as part of an overarching commitment to school-wide integration of restorative values. It’s not enough to simply ask the “restorative questions,” or deliver a punitive response that’s masked with restorative language. In a restorative school community, every person understands and prioritizes living out the 5 Rs of Relationship, Respect, Responsibility, Repair and Reintegration.

When teachers and administrators have more strategies for classroom management and responding to violations of discipline policy, they are empowered to choose the most appropriate tool or intervention for a given scenario. When used effectively, restorative educators will notice an increase in classroom time for students and a decrease in time spent managing the same issues again and again.

BRITE Co. will partner with your school or district to design and deliver training and consultation that takes into account your current school climate and the unique needs of your staff and students.

We love training students! Based on the success of BRITE Co.’s Restorative Practices in Schools program, we are eager to work with your students and elevate youth voices’ as Restorative Ambassadors in your school community.

 
 
 

Training Packages Can Include:

  • Introduction to Restorative Practices in Schools

  • Connection Circles & Strategies for Building Relationships

  • Restorative Conversations & Agreement Meetings for Addressing One-on-One Conflict

  • Restorative Conferencing as an Alternative to Detention, Suspension, Expulsion

  • Restorative Practices for Improving Collegial Relationships

  • Restorative Practices Through Games & Experiential Learning

  • Assembling & Training a Restorative Student Team

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I've heard about restorative practices, but you all gave me practical tools I can use.

-Waldorf Teacher

 

Recent Clients

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One Educator’s Perspective

"Working with groups is a complex activity. Everyone is coming from their own perspective, their own personal path, and we often have no idea where someone is coming from before we as teachers/facilitators jump right into a particular lesson or activity, asking the participants to join our agenda without taking the pulse of the group or knowing where the individuals are coming from.

Using a brief connection circle before any given activity allows the group identity to present itself - a whole new entity is born which can then not only help the teacher/facilitator to guide the group, but create, in a way, a new teacher/facilitator! When a group co-creates this new entity, everyone is engaged, the tendency of participant passivity is minimized, and there is palpable equity. This not only empowers students/participants, but it alleviates the sense that the teacher/facilitator has to 'do all the work.'

I believe this is the educational approach of the future - groups working together to build a vessel for new ideas/initiatives/innovations to come through. Connection circles help us tap into the collective wisdom; we are stronger together."

-Cory Waletzko, Upper Valley Waldorf School Vermont

 
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Learn about BRITE CO’s Restorative Practices in Schools Program

RPS 5-Year Comprehensive Report
 
 
 

Thinking About Bringing Restorative Practices to Your School?

Please get in touch to discuss the specific needs of your school or district.

We want to hear from you!

 
 
 

Building Restorative communities

 

Early Interventions

BRITE Co. can bring training and programs to your community based organization. Working with organizations to keep everyone in our community integrated.

 
 

Working in Your Community to Build Resilience

BRITE Collaborative can training along the continuum of restorative offerings and interventions to help build relationships and transform conflict.

We want to work with YOU to help create access to tools and skills that help create connection, build empathy, and collective resilience. Reach out to us to learn how we can help support your community! We work with youth serving organizations, organizations working with populations who have lived experience in the criminal justice system, those serving other at-risk communities.

Restorative Offerings Can Include: 

  • Training for all staff in how to use and lead Connection Circles

  • Training in Restorative Conversations to address one-on-one conflict

  • Practice with Advanced Skills for creating a psychologically safe environment

  • Collaborative designing a restorative process that responds to your organization’s needs

  • Ongoing coaching and consultation

  • Referrals to BRITE Collaborative to address significant harm through a restorative process

“Our mistakes do not define us. It is really beautiful for me to say we have the opportunity to help youth and adults learn from their mistakes. To understand that our mistakes do not define us. And that having the greater community around us helps with that learning.”
— Dr. Perla Delgado, Executive Director, I Had a Dream Foundation Boulder County
 
 
 

Additional Trainings We Offer

Law Enforcement
Volunteers and Individuals
Workplaces

Justice for your Community, by Your Community.

In Partnership

Working with local law enforcement and municipal courts helps create stronger, more resilient communities

 

BRITE Collaborative and the City of Longmont Pioneered Community Based Restorative Justice!

BRITE Collaborative trains law enforcement departments how to implement its nationally acclaimed community Restorative Justice Model in partnership with police

Restorative Justice is an evidence-based alternative to the conventional criminal justice system that is proven to reduce recidivism and give victims of crime a more satisfactory experience of justice. Recent growth in restorative justice programming in the U.S. has occurred primarily through District Attorney Diversion programs and schools. However, a growing number of police departments are exploring how to utilize community restorative justice as an alternative to ticketing and arrests. BRITE Co. is committed to supporting other communities and cities in developing this police partnership model so that others can learn from our challenges and successes.

Based on our experience in Longmont and other communities, BRITE Co. has found that through direct experience and participation, police officers grow to embrace restorative justice as a viable option that helps them keep the community safe. Officers often refer to restorative justice as giving them an additional tool in their tool belt for working with victims and offenders of crime.

 
 

Training Packages Can Include:

  • Consultation with Leadership and Restorative Justice Advocates within the Longmont Police Department

  • Training with Law Enforcement Officers and Command Staff on How To Refer and Participate in Restorative Justice, Co-Delivered by BRITE Co. Staff and Longmont Police Officers

  • Program Coordination Training with BRITE Co.’s Community Restorative Justice Program Staff

  • Training Volunteers to participate as Facilitators and Community Members in a Police-RJ Partnership Model

  • Access to Administrative Documents and Resources Necessary to Start an RJ Program

  • Ongoing Support & Consultation

 
“Colorado is the frontline of Restorative Justice in the United States, and Longmont is the frontline of Restorative Justice in Colorado.”
— Dr. Jeffrey London, Metropolitan State University
 
 

BRITE CO. staff and our School Resource Officer Team meet quarterly to train Officers on how to implement restorative practices in their work within our local school districts.

“Prior to my employment with the LPD, I was a supervisor at a much smaller, rural law enforcement agency for several years. I wish all communities could have a resource as impactful as the BRITE Co. process.

Through the course of participating in several referrals, “circles” or conferences, and seeing some of the final outcomes of the contracts that resulted from these cases, I have learned from and benefitted from the cases as well. I have seen them (Responsible Persons) and their families come to a new level of awareness of how their choices affected others, and have seen the BRITE Co. process be a great asset in the police department’s community partnership efforts.”

— Former Longmont Officer & BRITE Co. Police Liaison Luke Wiley

 
 

Restorative Justice Offers a Solution Beyond “Prosecute or Let Go.”

The law enforcement agencies we have worked with - including our successful integration within the Longmont Police Department - report that they are extremely appreciative to have an additional option that provides an intervention that differs from prosecuting or issuing a warning. From the perspective of our law enforcement partners, Restorative Justice is not the appropriate for every case. But for people who are genuinely taking responsibility for their actions, Restorative Justice offers a way to hold people accountable to correcting their mistakes, repairing with victims, family, and community, and reintegrating without the life-altering consequences of a criminal record.

We are proud of the success we've had and the relationships we've built. Success is high, recidivism is low, and we are excited to share techniques, strategies, and lessons learned with you.

Could Your Community Use Restorative Justice?

Whether you simply want to discuss the possibilities or are ready to set your training dates…

We want to hear from you!

 

Law Enforcement Training Clients

 
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Additional Trainings We Offer

Schools
Volunteers and Individuals
Other Agencies