Social exclusion and violence:
Education for social cohesion

Creating New Choices : A violence prevention project for schools in Australia

Victoria, Australia

The over-arching goal of Creating New Choices -CNC- is to assist two or three schools, at any one time, in addressing issues relating to violence as they impact on their school community. The aim is to develop an intensive longterm relationship with those schools and to work with them utilizing a community development approach. The project has been a pioneer in its efforts at bridging this gap between education and welfare and opening a dialogue about violence in the educational arena. The CNC project was conceived by Berry Street Child and Family Services, one of Victoria's largest independant, non-government welfare organizations.

The project provides an extensive consultation service to schools interested in addressing issues of violence and to community workers seeking to work more effectively in the education system. When a school expresses an interest in the project, it is interviewed and ranked in order to accord to the project's selection criteria. These criteria have been developed over a number of years and represent the basic conditions for the project to be operated successfully. The first task for any school community is to develop a definition of violence appropriate to the school's context and the philosophies of the project. This extremely important step encourages discussions and debates and allows individuals to talk about their own experiences of violence. The school needs time to « grapple » with the principles of operating a violence prevention project. A continuum of violence is formed by the more subtle, pervasive forms of coercion, intimidation and abuse together with the more extreme manifestations of violence. This concept of the continuum of violence needs to be introduced to the school community. An extensive consultation is organised with the wider community in which the school operates : community forum, school surveys, discussion groups and information sessions. Then an action plan is developed on severals areas, and needs are prioritized.

CNC was created as a means of coordinating school-based services utilizing a violence prevention framework. The aims were to create a non-violent culture by improving staff/student, parent/child and school/community relationships, and by informing students, teachers and parents of the ways to solve conflicts . The project tries also to help students to have a greater « voice » and more say over their educational experience.

Maree Sidey
Creating New Choices Coordinator
- Berry Street Victoria - 165 Burgundy Street - Heidelberg
3084 Australia
Tel : 613 9458 5788
Fax : 613 9458 5825
E-mail : msidey@berrystreet.org.au
Website : http://www.berrystreet.org.au/

Institutional Partners
Schools and community agencies
Financial Partners
Federal government

The project began in 1994

In 1997, an external evaluation of the CNC was implemented by the Youth Research Centre of the University of Melbourne ( see tasks and results in Innodata monographs 9, UNESCO-BIE 2001 Geneva)