About Us
Restorative Community Practice of Vermont was founded in 2018 by Dan DeWalt of South Newfane, Vermont. We at RCPVermont are committed to using training and practice to educate community members on the meanings and mindsets of restorative practice, compassionate communication, and trauma-informed community healing. We provide the skills needed for communities to find healing when conflict occurs and prevent harm whenever possible. Every moment of compassion, empathy, and deep listening ripples out into the community and helps the world become a little bit more harmonious.
Our intention
is to promote restorative practices that prevent, address, and change behaviors that hurt individuals, families, schools, and communities. These practices focus on repairing harm and reintegrating those involved in conflict back into the community by talking about important issues, improving relationships, creating a peaceable climate, and nurturing critical awareness of each person’s valued place in their community. We create opportunities and provide resources for people to achieve these goals.
“Restorative Justice is respect. Respect for all, even those who are different from us; even those who seem to be our enemies. Respect reminds us of our interconnectedness, but also of our differences. Respect insists we balance concerns for all parties. If we pursue justice as respect, we will do justice restoratively.”
-Howard Zehr
We provide a range of assistance and solutions for individuals or organizations facing conflicts and disagreements. Through training opportunities and access to facilitated conflict resolution, our goal is to make every person familiar with and conversant in restorative practices to deal with life’s conflicts and tensions.
“The key to transformation is a proactive bias toward seeing conflict as a potential catalyst for growth.”
- John Paul Lederach, "The Little Book of Conflict Transformation"