Norm Pacheco's Story
How I Learned to Take the Lead Through AVP
By Norman Pacheco, AVP Trainer at Ft. Lyon Correctional Center
Hi. I came to AVP in the fall of 1987. For me it was the beginning of a life changing experience. Up to that point I had been involved with a variety of self-help programs, so many of them were all the same, or so I thought.
I was influenced by a friend who had been a long-time volunteer. It was 1974 when I first met Ms. Leanore Goodenow at a Quaker Friends Meeting. Her influence lead me into areas that I would never have known about. I was part of her Denver discussion group, the creative writing class, and the fine arts programs she helped to bring into the Department of Corrections facilities. I saw her as a strong person, an example to me and others that anything was possible. With a little motivation and determined dedication, things could and would happen. Her ideas were many, and we were the force to bring it about. I learned such values from her as inspiration, encouragement, friendship, and of course, leadership.
Over the years of my participation in AVP, working with those great people in New Foundations, I was offered the opportunity to learn many things about myself and others. My own personal development in AVP enhanced what I had learned through my involvement in previous programs. The conflict management, community building, conflict resolution, transforming power, learning how to be a good person, and living by example, are skills I was learning which would help prepare me for the years ahead.
I believe that AVP gave me the strength to lead when there was no one there to lead on. I went to administrations at facilities where I was housed and asked for the AVP program to be offered at those facilities. The best information I had to offer there was myself and how the program had helped me to develop values I had never before known. I spoke about the New Foundations people, about their dedication to nonviolence, about how the workshops were valuable tools in the changing of lives. I spoke about the one person who taught me to look for the good in the bad and accept life in its simplest terms. In the many affirmations posters I have received [one of the AVP exercises], I see the words “good leader,” “strong person,” and “teacher.” As those words have come forth, I pay tribute to my friend, Leanore, for her role in teaching me what is meant by being a leader.
I am proud to say that AVP is going strong in facilities where I helped plant the seed. Not just in Colorado prisons, but also throughout the USA, many of my friends live this new way of life and strive towards nonviolence.
Editor’s note: Norm has been instrumental in starting new AVP programs for New Foundations at Kit Carson Correctional Center in January 2002 and, most recently in November 2004, Ft. Lyon Correctional Center.