We work with children and youth.

Through our Berkshire Violence Prevention Center (BVPC), we place special focus on working with children and youth in schools and community organizations to address issues of violence within youth communities. BVPP partners with schools and centers to provide age-appropriate violence prevention/risk-reduction programming and includes:

• series of interactive workshops designed to help youth develop skills to identify and prevent violence, learn respect and empathy for others, understand the dynamics of healthy relationships, learn healthy communication skills, explore cultural competency and gender roles, and improve decision-making;
• age appropriate sex education programming for youth and parents; and
• youth engagement activities both during school hours and in after-school programs to promote youth leadership to take concrete action to stop violence and bullying within their peer communities.

Our BVPP staff’s extensive training in evidence-based and best practices programs allows BVPP to develop innovative programming that engages youth with varying backgrounds and risk factors.

We work with our community. 

Educating our community regarding issues of violence and informing it of who we are, what we do, how to reach us, and how to help are essential components of our work. We work hard to be out in our community to coordinate our work with others, to inform our community about the intersections between domestic and sexual violence and other pressing issues, to distribute community education materials, to provide training to professionals, and to engage community members, organizations and businesses in the effort to stop violence.

We participate in many community coalitions and groups, including the District Attorney’s Roundtable on Domestic Violence, United Way’s “Face the Facts” Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative, the South County Health Caravan, the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, the Multicultural Task Force, Human/Animal Violence Education Network, Berkshire County Head Start Executive Board and the Berkshire County Homelessness Continuum of Care Committee.

We are appointed members of the Department of Children and Families Citizen’s Advisory Board, the Pittsfield/North Adams Department of Transitional Assistance Advisory Board, and the Berkshire Commission on the Status of Women.

We also have formal collaborative grants with the Berkshire County Kids’ Place, the Adams Police Department, the Pittsfield Police Department, Berkshire County Sheriff’s Department, and the area Homelessness Collaborative partnering with ServiceNet, Berkshire County Regional Housing Authority, and Community Legal Aid.

We work for systems transformation. 

We will keep fighting until everyone is safe and everyone is free. We demand an end to the criminalization of poverty and of Black, Brown and Indigenous people, to the militarization of law enforcement, and to the perpetuation of injustice in the name of safety.  We advocate for affordable housing, decent income supports, health care as a human right, living wages, universal child care, violence prevention and response, equity in education, mental health and substance use supports, and healing services for everyone, most especially for communities bearing the brunt of racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia.  Click here to learn more about why our anti-violence work is and must be anti-racist.

Interested in working with us?  Contact us at (413) 499-2425 or info@elizabethfreemancenter.org.