Groups of people — whether in a community, workplace, school or other organization — are most capable of sustaining change when they feel engaged and can develop a sense of belonging.

Kailani CapoteKailani Capote, the IIRP Graduate School’s 2021 Impact Scholarship recipient, had been working to build her capacity for restorative action for several years. But when the pandemic hit, she found her work immediately relevant to address calls for support and dialogue in New York City.

“I started off by offering community building circles for whoever wanted to talk about the pandemic. People were asking, ‘Where do we go from here?’” explains Kailani.

After George Floyd’s murder and the historic protests it inspired, various communities in upper Manhattan reached out to the New York Peace Institute, where Kailani has worked for four years. She ended up facilitating numerous conversations about racism and the harms it causes.

The Three Questions video series will feature new and innovative thinkers from the field of restorative practices and beyond. In each episode, a special guest will be asked three questions by John W. Bailie, Ph.D., IIRP President, that center around themes of leadership and organizational culture.

In Episode 1, you will hear from Zach Mercurio, Ph.D., author of “The Invisible Leader” and a researcher and consultant for Purposeful Leadership.

Intentional Classroom Engagement is an essential workbook to help you hone your skills and competencies for building better relationships with your students, their families and your colleagues.

The Covid-19 pandemic has turned everyone's life upside down. Schools especially have struggled to serve students and families through an ever-changing environment. In this 60-minute webinar, three educators share the lessons they've learned about how to build and maintain positive relationships during these challenging times, and take your questions. Please join us!

The IIRP Graduate School recently partnered with Microsoft Educator Center to create a free professional development resource for educators seeking to do effective anti-racism work in the classroom.

A series of courses for individualized, self-directed learning, the modules can also be worked through by an independent team of educators within a professional learning community.

The Anti-racism journey for educators with students includes a kit of resources grounded in social and emotional learning (SEL) and curated by experts in the fields of equity and inclusion, restorative practices and education technology.

I had the recent pleasure of meeting with Ian Marder, Ph.D., Lecturer in Criminology at Maynooth University’s Department of Law, Republic of Ireland, to discuss his recent publication. The article, "The new international restorative justice framework: Reviewing three years of progress and efforts to promote access to services and cultural change," was published in The International Journal of Restorative Justice in 2020.

Higher education is changing in ways the COVID-19 crisis has exposed and accelerated.

Higher education institutions are faced with financial demands, the need to adapt to online learning, social and political unrest in the culture and on campus. Only by harnessing the power of relationships can these institutions successfully navigate their educational, business and community needs.

purseHow do you engage children and youth in restorative and relational processes? This can be difficult, especially in these challenging times — but there is an answer … and it can be delivered online!

Following their highly successful involvement in the EU Erasmus+ projects, Les Davey and John Boulton, Directors of SynRJ, an IIRP Graduate School Partner based in the UK, found it increasingly evident that training children and youth directly is the key to consolidating implementation and fully embedding restorative processes. As a result, SynRJ has developed student workbooks and teacher's guides in their "Restorative and Relational Processes in Action" book series to achieve this in a very practical and engaging way.

Linda Kligman 480x600In 2020, IIRP Vice President for Administration Linda Kligman, Ph.D., received her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Ethical and Creative Leadership and a specialization in Martin Luther King, Jr. Studies. Her dissertation, Widening circles: A Grounded Theory study of workplace leadership, received two honors from Union Institute and University: The Marvin B. Sussman Award for originality, interdisciplinarity, and social relevance in scholarship; and the Virgil A. Wood Award for excellence advancing the legacy of Martin Luther King. Linda has been invited to be the Social Justice Speaker at Union’s Spring Residency. Her thesis has been made available for free download.

When I came to work at the International Institute for Restorative Practices in 2010 it was a profoundly different experience for me. My career had largely been in the nonprofit sector, I had run community organizations, a private company, and served on many boards, but this culture of high expectations and abundant support felt remarkably different. We practiced giving and receiving candid feedback in team builders, we were encouraged to talk about and express our feelings, and instead of running decisions “up the ladder” we “circled up” to include others. I enjoyed coming to work even on the hardest days. This relational orientation allowed me to stretch and find my role within an ambitious, innovative and dynamic graduate school.

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Restorative Works Year in Review 2023 (PDF)

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