What we do

The CHAT Project is a community-based approach to addressing harm and advancing safety. 

We help families and communities connect with each other and to learn (or relearn) practices for moving through conflict, reducing violence, and strengthening connections.

We focus on:

  • Addressing interpersonal violence – meaning conflict and violence between people in close relationships. This includes domestic violence, sexual violence and other forms of family and group conflict and harm.

 

  • Engaging community support in addressing harm, reducing violence, planning for safety, and engaging in long-term change.

 

  • Expanding safe opportunities for taking accountability for people who have caused and co-signed or supported harm.

 

  • Strengthening connections between family and community members for safety and violence prevention. Helping people talk with the people they already know.

What is our Approach?

Based in the principles and practices of restorative justice and circles, The CHAT Project works with individuals, families (however defined), friends, and community members who are seeking solutions to interpersonal harm and violence.

  • Non-judgmental listening and support for problem-solving
  • Collective responses to harm, bringing natural support systems into the process
  • Non-police and non-law enforcement options
  • Racial justice; gender justice; queer justice; immigrant justice; disability justice commitment
  • Support across language, currently offering support in English, Spanish and ASL

The approach and guiding questions that arise from restorative justice help guide the work of The CHAT Project in addressing conflict and harm as a community in non-punitive ways.

To learn more about Restorative Justice, please visit:

Vist Zehr Institute

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What is restorative justice?

“Restorative justice is an approach to achieving justice that involves, to the extent possible, all those who have a stake in a specific offense or harm to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations in order to heal and put things as right as possible”

Howard Zehr

“The Little Book of Restorative Justice”

An image of a circle centerpiece. Two pieces of cloth are laying side-by-side on the floor, covered with small rocks, shells, and a bouquet of yellow and white flowers. In a circle around the edge of the cloth there are yellow pieces of paper with words written in Spanish.

What are Circles?

Circles originate from Indigenous and First Nation communities’ ways of life, ceremony, of being and coming together. Indigenous communities are where circles were and continue to be rooted.

The CHAT Project is a non-indigenous program whose members experienced and learned about circles in different ways prior to coming to CHAT. Currently, The CHAT Project helps families, their loved ones, and communities create and gather together in their own circles as a primary way to have safe and meaningful face-to-face dialogues.

We see ourselves as learners and honor the histories and indigenous communities where the wisdom and ceremony of circle is rooted.

To learn more about Circles, please visit:

Visit Gathering Power