With Special Guest Teya Sepinuck, Founder of Theater of Witness

Teya Sepinuck is the founder and director of Theater of Witness, a model of performance that gives voice to those who have been marginalized, forgotten or are invisible in society. For the past 25 years, she has been creating and producing Theater of Witness projects with prisoners and their families, survivors and perpetrators of abuse, refugees, immigrants, elders and those who have lived through war.

Her work has taken her to Poland and Northern Ireland where she just completed her third production at The Playhouse in Derry /Londonderry creating original Theatre of Witness with ex-combatants, members of the security forces, survivors, witnesses and those living with the intergenerational legacy of the Troubles.

Teya, who has a Masters Degree in Community Counseling was an adjunct faculty in dance at Swarthmore College from 1974 to 1991. She is the recipient of Philadelphia Human Rights Award for Arts and Culture from the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, a Local Hero Award from Bank of America, as well as Cultural Arts Award from Womens Way and the Mayors Commission on Women. She has a long time meditation practice which informs all of her work and life. Her new book "Theatre of Witness - Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation and Peace (Buy at amazon) is published by Jessica Kingsley Press and launched in January 2013.

With Special Guest Brenda Morrison of Simon Fraser University

Brenda Morrison is the Director of the Centre for Restorative Justice and an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University. She is a social psychologist with field experience in outdoor education, government administration and restorative justice. Her teaching and research interests include transformative and restorative justice, responsive regulation, school violence and safety, conflict and cooperation, shame-management and social identity, the self and self-interest.

Dr. Morrison has presented papers at UNESCO, in Paris, and the House of Lords, in London. She is a member of a number of editorial boards, including the recently launched Restorative Justice: An International Journal. In Europe, she is on the advisory board of Restorative Justice in Europe: Safeguarding Victims & Empowering Professionals. Nationally, she is a research partner with PREVNet (Promoting Relationships Eliminating Violence Network) and a reconciliation ambassador for Reconciliation Canada. In British Columbia, she is a member of the working group for Social Responsibility and Collaborative Learning in Education, and on the advisory board for the B.C. Victims of Homicide Support Initiative. She is an active board member for the North Shore Restorative Justice Society and an associate board member of Vancouver Association for Restorative Justice.

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With Special Guest Fania Davis and a Youth Representative from RJOY

This podcast archive features a snapshot into one of the successfully and longer-running programs in restorative justice. Particularly inspiring and informative, Fania and Destiny Shabazz share how the programs work in Oakland and beyond. This podcast can be used as a great tool for educators, principals and school officials, law enforcement and many others.

This podcast archive features a snapshot into one of the successfully and longer-running programs in restorative justice. Particularly inspiring and informative, Fania and Destiny Shabazz share how the programs work in Oakland and beyond. This podcast can be used as a great tool for educators, principals and school officials, law enforcement and many others.

Fania Davis is Co-Founder and Executive Director of RJOY (Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth)

Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the social ferment of the civil rights era, the murder of two close childhood friends in the 1963 Sunday School bombing crystallized within Fania a passionate commitment to social transformation. For the next decades, she was active in the civil rights, Black liberation, women's, prisoners', peace, anti-racial violence and anti-apartheid movements. After receiving her law degree from University of California , Berkeley in 1979, Fania practiced almost 27 years as a civil rights trial lawyer.

During the mid 1990's, she entered a Ph.D. program in indigenous studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and apprenticed with traditional healers around the globe, particularly in Africa . Since receiving her Ph.D. in 2003, Fania has been engaged in a search for healing alternatives to adversarial justice. She has taught Restorative Justice at San Francisco 's New College Law School and Indigenous Peacemaking at Eastern Mennonite University 's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She writes and speaks on these subjects.

The search for a healing justice also led Fania to bring restorative justice to Oakland . A founder and currently Director of RJOY, Fania also serves as counsel to the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. She recently received the Ubuntu award for service to humanity. Fania's research interests include exploring the indigenous roots, particlarly the African indigenous roots, of restorative justice. Fania is also a mother of two children, a dancer, and practitioner of yoga.

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With Special Guest Dr. Sandra Pavelka

Sandra Pavelka, Ph.D., serves as founding Director of the Institute for Youth and Justice Studies and Associate Professor of Public Affairs at Florida Gulf Coast University. Dr. Pavelka previously served as the Project Administrator of the Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) Project funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. She also was Senior Research Associate with the Community Justice Institute at Florida Atlantic University.

Dr. Pavelka serves as Editor for the International Journal of Restorative Justice and holds a number of leadership positions on local and state boards. Dr. Pavelka received her Ph.D. in Public Administration with a specialization in Justice Policy from Florida Atlantic University. Her dissertation, Practice to Policy to Management: A Restorative Justice Framework, focused on system reform and policy implementation of restorative justice nationally. She holds a Master of Public Administration from Florida International University and Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Florida. Dr. Pavelka's research interests include: community and restorative justice, juvenile justice, public policy and program evaluation.

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