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Personal Safety and Self Defense for children, teens and adults.Services for people with Special Needs and Disabilities.PERSONAL SAFETY PROGRAMS FOR PEOPLE WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
Other life situations such as a history of child sexual assault, homelessness, substance abuse, or domestic violence can affect the way people perceive their power, their value, and their right to be safe. Our services address the special needs of people whose histories include challenges like these. Please scroll down this page for additional information on these programs. WORKSHOPS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES"I lost my sight suddenly two years ago. Taking your workshop gave me back my belief in my own power. This is the first time since I went blind that I feel really good." We work with participants to identify their strengths and then to practice ways of using those strengths to help themselves stay safe. OUR WORKSHOPS
All workshops include experiential, step-by-step practice of skills such as
"Your program is without question the most effective self defense training our students have ever participated in....To help others have the confidence to move in an urban--or any--environment "My son has a developmental disability. He is proud of his new job, and he does good work, but he is sometimes harassed on the bus and sometimes by the customers. Your workshop gave him the skills and the confidence to stay safe and to get help." "Our visually impaired and deaf children are at a higher risk in our society. The concepts, demonstrations, and awareness that you brought to these students and their parents will lessen these "at risk" situations." “I have been gradually losing my sight for ten years. I've been dealing with it by going out less and less. When I moved into the Center for the Blind this evening, I thought I would lie on my bed and wait for the ceiling tiles to disappear. And instead, I came to THIS workshop. I feel great, and I've decided: I'm not hiding out at home any more. I'm going to live differently from now on!" WORKSHOPS FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH OTHER LIFE CHALLENGES"For survivors, FULLPOWER programs offer a way to take back their power on a physical level. For all of us, they offer a way to free ourselves from fear." -- Ellen Bass, Co-Author of The Courage to Heal and Free Your Mind Child sexual assault, domestic violence, homelessness, or substance abuse can have lasting effects on the way people perceive themselves and their power. Our workshops create a context for developing a strong set of personal safety skills while recognizing how past experiences can affect anyone's process of looking at options and making choices. Our goal is to provide our participants with tools to make choices and take action that will help them stay physically and emotionally safe in future situations while acknowledging, respecting, and honoring past choices and their reasons for making them.
"We serve children who are homeless, have run away from their homes, been 'thrown out' of their homes, or are in a family crisis. The TEENPOWER class was able to help us provide the vital service of teaching safety and self-defense to these at-risk teens. I would highly recommend the class to any youth!" "Some of the women in our emergency shelter have just left an abusive relationship, and their risk of injury and death is very high. 100% of the children we work with have been exposed to physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and/or neglect. KIDPOWER provides these mothers and children with the opportunity to hear the same healthy messages about how to be safe and also how they can take charge and get help if something doesn't feel okay. With KIDPOWER, our children have been able to learn how to identify people they can go to in order to get help and how to persist until they get the help they need." "As a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has worked with culturally diverse populations for many years, I have never witnessed such dramatic positive change in young people over the course of a single weekend! These young people went from thinking of themselves as victims with family stories of disempowerment from a variety of stressors like all forms of abuse, witnesses to repeated domestic violence, and periodic homelessness to stories of themselves in the world as powerful, courageous and competent!" "A majority of the clients in our Transitional Housing Program are single moms with a history of domestic violence and their children, who witnessed the abuse and, in many cases, were abused themselves. It has been truly amazing to witness the transformation both in the women and the little kids in a few short hours. The participants started out shy and doubtful but were soon drawing on energies they didn't know they had. In all the many years I've been working for people's empowerment, I have never witnessed anything as truly empowering as these workshops." "The children we serve most often have experienced severe abuse and/or neglect. In our efforts to find and use every resource possible to help these children see themselves as strong, valuable, and capable of breaking away from patterns that are unhealthy, we have found KIDPOWER to be a very powerful tool -- one whose philosophy, skills and language we will no doubt continue to weave into the culture of our program from now on." |
Some special needs grow from differences in the way our bodies and minds work. Our students with visual or mobility impairment, deafness, or developmental delays receive training that is adapted to meet their needs. 
Participants also practice skills relevant to their own life situations, such as staying safe while riding public transit; making safe choices with support tools such as canes, service dogs, and wheelchairs that require locking in a potentially dangerous situation; or using effective physical self-defense skills without being able to see the target or while seated in a wheelchair.
without fear is a great gift."