About the Toolkit

Creative Interventions (CI) started in 2004 in Oakland, California as a national resource centre to create and promote community-based interventions to interpersonal violence.  Its founders worked with survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault for many years but found limitations in the mainstream US approach to working with violence.  CI uses experience and knowledge to support everyday people to challenge and overcome violence.

CI developed a community-based approach to end interpersonal violence.  Organisations that work on domestic violence and sexual assault usually treat it as an individual problem that can be solved with counselling and individual support, or rely on the police and criminal system.  CI instead turned to communities, and to supporting community-based resistance to violence in all its forms.

A community-based approach means everyday people taking action together to end violence.  Those people could be whānau, friends, neighbours, co-workers, members of community organisations and sports clubs, anyone affected by violence or who wants to stop it.

CI was inspired by a social movement that the US group Incite! Women of Color against Violence came out of in 2000.  Over a thousand people, mostly from communities of colour, gathered at the first Color of Violence conference in California looking for responses to violence that were safer and more effective than policing and prisons.

Another organisation, Critical Resistance, came out of a 1998 conference attended by thousands committed to prison abolition.  Their joint statement on gender violence and the Prison Industrial Complex inspired many communities to rethink their responses to violence, prison and policing.

The Incite! and Critical Resistance statement begins:

“We call on social justice movements to develop strategies and analysis that address both state AND interpersonal violence, particularly violence against women.  Currently, activists/ movements that address state violence (such as anti-prison, anti-police brutality groups) often work in isolation from activists/ movements that address domestic and sexual violence.  The result is that women of color, who suffer disproportionately from both state and interpersonal violence, have become marginalized within these movements.  It is critical that we develop responses to gender violence that do not depend on a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic criminal justice system.  It is also important that we develop strategies that challenge the criminal justice system and that also provide safety for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.  To live violence free-lives, we must develop holistic strategies for addressing violence that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.”

In the spirit of that statement and in honour of the many who have resisted violence over the generations, CI started an organisation that would exist just long enough to create resources to support this work.  They produced the Creative Interventions toolkit: A practical guide to stop interpersonal violence.  After writing their toolkit, CI ended as an organisation.  Its members now focus on ways to support a community-based response to violence that truly relies on local communities, from informal friendship networks to community institutions such as faith institutions, sports clubs, unions or community.

The short lifespan of the organisation was planned to:

• Keep the focus on the community-based project rather than on the survival of CI
• Allow for risk-taking within the organisation (since many of the concepts and practices of CI are considered experimental, controversial and risky) rather than protecting the reputation of CI.

The original toolkit came from a 3-year period from 2006 to 2009 when CI joined with partner organisations in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Asian Women’s Shelter, Shimtuh, Narika, and La Clinica de la Raza and others (a full list of contributors is in the toolkit).

These organisations worked together to create an approach to domestic violence and sexual assault.  All had years of experience working in mostly immigrant communities on these issues, and wanted to create options for people experiencing violence, especially for people who couldn’t or didn’t want to turn to the State.  CI wanted to know:

• How can family members, friends, neighbours, co-workers and community members act to end violence that people they care about are experiencing? In the toolkit these are community allies (you might have heard them called bystanders or social networks).
• How can we use our connection and care for people who are harmed by violence to provide safety and community?
• How can we provide greater safety for people harmed by violence, whether or not they stay with or need to be around the people who have harmed them?
• How can we get people who are causing harm to stop, repair the damage they have done, and change their behaviour so that they become part of the solution?
• How can we change violent behaviour by using our connection and care for people who have caused harm, rather than by using threats, punishment or policing?
• How can we change common beliefs, practices and skills to respond to, end and prevent violence?
• How can we use all of the above to create the safe, respectful and healthy communities that we want?

These questions called for a new approach to interpersonal violence.

CI called this project the Community-based interventions project.  The aim was to create a new vision for violence intervention, to work with people experiencing violence, and to develop a model and tools from that work.

From the beginning, CI offered a community-based approach.  It mostly involved asking questions that would lead people to find the resources they needed among their own friends, family and community, and find answers from what they knew about their situation of violence, their values and their goals.

CI answered requests from people dealing with interpersonal violence who wanted something different from other domestic violence or sexual assault services.  CI worked together with them to find the ideas, tools and lessons in this toolkit guided by questions and values.  It was experimental.  Each situation was unique.  But some key questions led to responses that fit their values and needs.  The people coming to CI worked out what they wanted and needed without being told what they should do.  They found support in friends and family members coming together to think about their situation of violence and to create strategies for change.  

CI helped by asking questions and guiding a process for people to come up with their own responses and resources.  Instead of telling people what they should do, CI were helping people find their own expertise within a confusing and emotional situation.  It is a facilitated model. 

This involved:

• Self-reflection and clarification (What is going on?)
• Thinking about safety (How do you stay safe?)
• Finding help among friends, family and community (Who can help?)
• Working out goals (What do you want?)
• Supporting people who were harmed (How do you support the person who was harmed?)
• Thinking about what they wanted from the person doing harm (How do you support the person who caused harm to take accountability?)
• Finding ways to work collectively with their community (How do you work together?)
• Moving through what could be a long and winding process towards their goals (How are you doing?).

The CI toolkit that this website is based on is the result of that project.  It contains the model CI built together with partners and those who sought help.  It includes tips and information.  We expect that it will be used and improved on by all of you in your own situations of violence and your own communities.

“The people are our wealth”

The purpose of Te Wānanga o Raukawa is to contribute to the survival of Māori as a people.

Colonisation brought high rates of trauma and interpersonal violence, and the State has attacked Māori sources of safety and healing: tikanga and whānau (see He Whaipaanga Hou).  Interpersonal violence is now heartbreakingly common. 

When the State’s criminal system (police, courts and prisons) is the only way to respond to violence, there are a number of effects: 

• We lose faith in ourselves to solve problems
• Relying on the State makes it stronger, reinforcing colonisation and undermining tikanga
• People who are being hurt do nothing about the violence because reporting it doesn’t help them—it often makes things worse, by bringing the State into their lives, destroying the life of the person hurting them (who may be their parent, their partner, or someone else they rely on and care about), and taking away the support they get from that person as well as their whānau and friends
• People who are causing harm do nothing about their violence because the risks of admitting it (criminal conviction, risking job, access to children) are too great
• Communities do nothing about violence, or side with the person causing harm to protect them from the criminal system.

All of this makes our communities less safe, and makes it harder for people to get the support they need.

Communities can’t heal while violence is still common.  Healing and decolonisation in Māori communities means stopping violence, disentangling ourselves from the State and re-connecting with tikanga (see Transforming Whānau Violence).  We need ways to respond to violence that strengthen our communities. 

As a product of Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, Te Wānanga o Raukawa is committed to the well-being of its people and to rangatiratanga (self-determination).  Te Kawa o te Ako has been Te Wānanga o Raukawa’s response to problems including interpersonal violence.

We hope this website will help your community find its own solutions.

A community is behind this website and the toolkit it is based on. 

This website is a collaboration between Te Wānanga o Raukawa and Creative Interventions.  Additional support has come from Fulbright New Zealand and the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board.

The partner organisations towards the creation of the toolkit were:

• Incite! Women of Color against Violence (National). Creative Interventions is an affiliate of Incite! and came out of the social movement that Incite! represents
• Creative Interventions (Oakland, CA) (with many, many individual supporters—volunteers, board members, advisory board members, staff, organisational partners, large and small funders)
• Asian Women’s Shelter (Oakland, CA)
• Narika (Oakland, CA)
• Shimtuh, a project of Korean Community Center of the East Bay (KCCEB) (Oakland, CA)
• La Clinica de la Raza (Oakland, CA)
• StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP) (National). STOP is a spin-off project of Creative Interventions and is working with community organisations to promote community-based responses to violence through story-telling, and organising around successful strategies for communities to challenge violence in all of its

Many more people and organisations supported the toolkit, and are acknowledged there

This website is for anyone who wants to try a community-based approach to respond to and end violence (what we call an intervention).  You do not need to be trained professionals.  Any and all of us involved in or affected by violence can be part of solutions to violence.

People connected to the situation of violence

Person harmed (survivor or victim)

Are you someone who is directly hurt by violence?  The harm can be physical, emotional or verbal, sexual, financial and other (see Basics about violence).

Other people may also be harmed by direct violence, indirect harm resulting from violence, or threatened violence:

• children
• whānau members
• household members, like boarders or flatmates
• partners
• friends
• neighbours
• co-workers.

There is a section of this website with information and tools for the person harmed.

Ally or community ally

Are you a friend, whanaunga, team mate, neighbour, co-worker, or community member who is connected to someone being harmed?  Are you close to or connected to someone who is causing harm?  Were you called in to help with a situation of violence?

There is a section of this website with information and tools for allies.

Person doing harm

Are you harming others, now or in the past?  Have you been accused of harming others by someone?

There is a section of this website with information and tools for the person causing harm.

It is sometimes hard to tell who is mostly causing harm and who is mostly being harmed. 

• Even when one person is causing harm, the person hurt is often blamed by them and others. They may also blame themselves for causing the abuse, or think things they do are as bad as the abusive behaviour.  Women in particular are often expected to take responsibility for problems in their relationships and taught to blame themselves.
• Each person may have been violent with the other, but there is a clear difference in power. One person’s violence may be much less harmful than the other’s, or their violence may be self-defence.  The person most harmed or using violence in self-defence is the person harmed; the person most responsible for harm is the person doing harm.
• Very rarely there is mutual abuse or violence, where power in the relationship is somewhat equal, and each is as likely as the other to be abusive and cause harm.

These questions can help work out what is going on:

• Who is more afraid?
• Who starts the violence?
• Who ends up getting harmed?
• Who is changing and adapting to meet the other’s needs or moods?
• Who is more vulnerable?
• Who is using violence for power and control (abusive violence)? Who is using violence to try to get safety or integrity in a violent situation (self-defence)?
• Who always has to win?

This website is for situations where one person is more responsible for violence with more power to abuse.  It is not for situations of mutual abuse where there is shared power and vulnerability.  In situations of mutual abuse or violence, mediation or relationship counselling may be more appropriate (mediation is NOT recommended if abuse is one-sided).  

There is more information on this in basics about violence and in Differentiating between abuse and violence.

The facilitator

This is a facilitated model.  Someone may take on the role of facilitator to guide the group through the process.  You can have more than one facilitator, or share the role among your group.  Facilitators may have special needs and concerns throughout the intervention, and there is a section to help.  There is more information about the role of facilitators in Who can help.

Anti-violence organisations

This toolkit has been written by people with long histories working in anti-violence.  We encourage anti-violence organisations to consider offering community-based interventions as an option for people seeking help.

Other organisations, rōpū, businesses, iwi

This toolkit is also for people working in marae, rūnanga and iwi, social services, churches, community centres, political organisations, unions, sports teams, schools, child care centres, businesses or other groups where people live, play, work, worship, or do things together.