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What
You Can Do
At
Home
For Your Kids
At
School
At Work
In
Your Community
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Our
Complete Community Action Guide
For more
ideas, check out
our Community Action Guide for ideas on planning a
campaign in your community. [Community:
A group of people living, working, or learning together. ] The
entire guide can be viewed or downloaded for free in Adobe Acrobat format.
You will need Adobe
Acrobat Reader, (free download from Adobe Web site).
At Home
 Consider
how you resolve conflict and react to stress. Do you ever use words that shame, humiliate, intimidate?
Do you hold in your anger and take it out later on others? Managing anger is a discipline that takes practice.
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Take
time to cool down.
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Listen
respectfully. Speak respectfully.
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Focus
on the problem, not the person.
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Be
open to compromise.
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Turn off violent entertainment and do something fun, safe, &
healthy. Or, if you’ve already chosen to turn off violent entertainment,
turn it back on and see what America’s children are being exposed to.
Write at least one letter to a television sponsor, video game
company or music company.
Send
an e-mail to a friend telling them about Turn Off the Violence and inviting
them to participate.
Contact
us to learn about how you can contribute your time, resources, or
talents to the momentum of the Turn Off the Violence campaign.
For
Your Kids
Teach your kids to love reading.
(Language skills help them express anger without violence.)
Demonstrate
respect.
Demonstrate
nonviolent
conflict resolution.
Talk about your values.
Listen.
Set
boundaries. There's a popular myth that "You just can't
discipline kids anymore or you'll be arrested." It's false.
There are a lot of positive ways to discipline kids without
violence.
At
School
 Ask your school district, principal,
or your child's teacher to include creative conflict resolution concepts into
their lesson plans. Turn Off the Violence has an Educator’s Guide with lesson plans for grades
pre-K through 12.
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In history class, study peacemakers.
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In language arts, read about peacemakers. Write about what would change if
there were no violence.
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In phy ed, learn about sportsmanship.
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In music sing about peace, or study the relationship between music and emotions.
Does some music make you feel uptight and aggressive? Does some make you
feel calm?
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Implement a bullying prevention campaign from the Turn Off the Violence
materials.
There’s much more in our
Turn Off the Violence
Educator's Guide! |
At
Work
Teach
all company leaders how to lead by inspiration rather than
intimidation.
Become a corporate
member or supporter of the Turn Off the Violence coalition.
Contributions of services, equipment, supplies, or dollars are important to
making Turn Off the Violence grow. In-kind contributions have been as important
to the success of Turn Off the Violence as financial contributions.
Sponsor a Turn Off the Violence event for employees and their families,
or the community.
 Host
a speaker about some issue of violence, such as keeping your kids safe, domestic
violence, workplace violence, bullying, media violence, etc.
Turn Off the Violence has reproducible paycheck stuffers and brochures on which
you can print your company name as a supporter. Use our
Community Action Guide for more ideas.
Promote the campaign to your family,
friends, co-workers, employees, mailing lists, and visitors to your office.
In
Your Community
 Arrange to have information about
the Turn Off the Violence campaign included in your school, business, or faith
community newsletter. Sample newsletter
announcement.
Organize
a single Turn Off the Violence event or an entire community campaign.
Our Community Action Guide
can
help get you started and it includes plenty of advice from other people across
the country who've planned their own campaigns in their schools, businesses,
faith communities, or towns. Begin here by reading about organizing
a powerful grassroots campaign on a
shoestring budget.
Sample
Newsletter Article
Imagine a day without any violence.
No fear for yourself or your family. Even those of us who haven't
been touched directly by violence experience mistrust of strangers and
fear for our children. [Organization] has joined the Turn Off the
Violence Coalition in an effort to make the world a safer place. We
can't change the world, but we can each change our small corner of
it. October 11 is "Turn Off the Violence Day." Please
join us in the campaign. On that day, turn off violent
entertainment; practice healthy ways of managing anger; and resolve to
treat family, friends, and co-workers with respect. We can do
it for one day. Then maybe we can do it the next day and the
next. For more information visit www.turnofftheviolence.org
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