Transformative Justice

“We are committed to justice, community and healing – at COLAGE, every person is valued and we work together to develop skills young people can use to have healthy relationships.”

— Jordan Budd, Executive Director

In all community spaces, it is inevitable that interpersonal harm and conflict will take place, and external mediation will be warranted — COLAGE is no exception. Research suggests that true healing can take place if harm is addressed with the belief that everyone is valuable, and no one is disposable. Through practicing transformative justice, our goal is to value everyone in our community by engaging in collaborative conflict resolution that does not rely on punitive models of accountability. We believe that no harm is enacted in a vacuum and that it is important to get at the root of why a harm was caused in order to effectively address it. Everyone is capable of both harming and being harmed and we hope to build strategies to repair and grow as a community from instances of harm.

With this in mind, COLAGE has formally established the Transformative Justice Committee (TJC) which will serve as the official mechanism for processing community harm and facilitating accountability for staff, volunteers, program participants, and community members.

COLAGE draws from the powerful healing work and practices of the Black radical tradition and Indigenous groups’ models for community accountability; through transformative justice, we move away from forms of punishment that replicate harm. This process is also about ensuring that all community members have access to the emotional and material resources they need in order to prevent harm from occurring. To that end, the COLAGE Transformative Justice Committee includes an internal Emotional Support Team that can be utilized by anyone in the community, at any time, for any emotional support need.

Lastly, if you know that you have caused harm, you can go to TJC for support around creating your own accountability process. Below are steps for those who have experienced harm, but they are applicable to those who realized they have caused harm.

Step One

There are three ways to engage if you’d like to pursue transformative justice for an instance of harm that has taken place in the COLAGE community:

Fill out this form to start the Transformative Justice process.
Get in touch directly with an individual Serving Committee member (see below).
Email the Transformative Justice Committee.

Step Two

A member of the Serving Committee will respond to your need to initiate the TJC process.

Step Three

TJC members will work together with the harmed party and any community members that the harmed party chooses to involve on how to achieve accountability.

Step Four

Moving forward with the resolution process according to the needs of the harmed party, and also meeting with the harmer to assess needs and experiences of all parties involved.

Step Five

The final step provides involved parties the opportunities to follow up on the process, provide feedback to the TJC, and access the Emotional Support Team if desired.

Additional Information

If you are interested in learning more about TJC, please view our official and exhaustive TJC document. If you are interested in serving on the TJC, please fill out the volunteer application below.

TJC Document

TJC Application