Silicon Valley FACES

Common Ground is a 1-3 day on campus program delivered to middle schools to lay the foundation for a successful transition to a new campus and the new level of learning and expectations. The daytime program directly addresses the need to engage students by creating an early and effective shared space - the “common ground.” The program’s overarching goal is for students to feel safe, connected, excited, and motivated to partake in the full range of educational and positive social opportunities offered in middle school.

Camp Common Ground integrates the internal development assets of:
Commitment to Learning through school engagement, bonding to a new school, and motivation to be successful students who are engaged and involved.
Positive Values of caring, honesty, responsibility, and equality.
Social Competencies in decision making, resistance skills, cultural differences, and peaceful conflict resolution.
Positive Identity with personal power, self-esteem, sense of purpose, and positive cultural identity

The Leadership Institute incorporates a variety of hands-on interactive experiences to promote the leadership skills of middle- and high-school students. Graduates of the Leadership Institute are equipped with the tools and vocabulary to become role models and effective leaders. Sessions can be tailored to groups of any size and can be offered as individual modules or part of a complete curriculum.

Sessions include:
Team Building
Communication Skills
Socio-Economic Privilege
Bullying/Cyber-Bullying
Conflict and Violence
Competition vs. Collaboration
Gratitude and Appreciation
Other modules by request (specific to school/organization)

SV FACES offers in-depth, experiential Restorative Practice training for educators, school administrators and community members/law enforcement professionals who work with students. Our program illustrates how restorative strategies can be seamlessly integrated into the classroom, curriculum, and culture of schools. It defines what restorative practices are, explains why they are a transformational tool for fostering healthy relationships in schools, and shows how they can be useful processes for students, educators, and learning communities.

We work with schools in long-term partnerships to plan implementation, introduce restorative practice to parents, student delegates, and work with community partners to help train stakeholders on peer-to-peer restorative practices such as peer mediation, peer circles, and preventative and post-conflict resolution programs.

Organizational leaders play an important role in setting the tone for the shift towards effective conflict management and resolution to help build healthy relationships in an organization. Open, effective communication, as well as clear channels for feedback, optimizes the opportunity for discussion of issues related to everyday conflict that may arise in the workplace. Every organization starts from a different place and in a unique context, but all have room for improvement.

FACES delivers conflict management and resolution training in the education, corporate, and government sectors. Participants engage in open and honest dialogue and learn skills to improve effective communication in a multicultural environment. They discover how perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors impact the workplace and the community. Programs are designed to meet the needs of each client and to improve the community as a whole.