I-LED: Institute for Leadership in Education Development

The Futures Without Violence, formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund, Institute for Leadership in Education Development (I-LED) offers hands-on workshops and technical assistance to help US Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) grantees to improve the organization, quality, and consistency of education and training programs.  I-LED has a national focus, targeting assistance to any OVW grantees that conduct education and training programs as part of their missions to enhance the justice system and community responses to all forms of violence against women, including domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking.

 

Since it began in September 2008, the I-LED project has served 200 multidisciplinary staff and consultants representing 60 organizations that receive funding through 10 major OVW grant programs. I-LED workshops reach national, multidisciplinary audiences of OVW grantees and their constituents, including advocates, attorneys, law enforcement, social workers, visitation center staff, volunteer coordinators, judges, and other professionals who engage in program design and/or faculty service.

 

PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
I-LED goals are to (1) enhance the relevance and effectiveness of training/ education programs supported by OVW, and (2) improve the capacity of OVW grantees to design and deliver well-organized, highly-interactive training/education for their constituents. Specific I-LED objectives are to:
1.      Create and deliver on-going, hands-on program and curriculum development workshops that help OVW grantees to incorporate a variety of interactive adult education methods and prepare detailed program and curriculum outlines;
2.      Design and present foundational and advanced faculty development workshops for multi-disciplinary audiences of OVW grantees and their constituents;
3.      Provide program and faculty development technical assistance to OVW staff and grantees through specific programs to support their training initiatives; and
4.      Promote leadership among OVW grantees in their design and delivery of education/training, including encouragement to incorporate sensitive, controversial, and emerging topics such as culture, trends in VAW research and practice, concepts of effective leadership, and other areas to broaden the depth and breadth of efforts to end and prevent violence against women.
 
CURRENT I-LED PROGRAMS
To achieve its goals and objectives, the I-LED project has developed a series of workshops for OVW grantees:
  • Effective Program and Curriculum Development Workshop (2.5 days). This workshop focuses in great detail on the process of designing a program and creating a program or curriculum outline. It does not deal with effective facilitation skills or how to train faculty to teach a program. Using the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory as the backdrop for design of highly interactive programs, the practice portions of this workshop engage participants in the actual design steps (e.g., assessing learning needs, writing learning objectives, designing learning activities, etc.), using a topic on which they wish to develop a program.
  • Faculty Development Workshop (2.5 days). This workshop also outlines the process for planning a program but in the context of learning how to facilitate programs effectively. Participants take and discuss the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory and develop a program segment that they will actually demonstrate at the workshop. Forty percent of the program is practice in which each faculty team presents its program segment, with critique and comments provided by the other participants and workshop faculty.
  • Effective Facilitation Skills Workshop (2 days). This workshop focuses on effective skills to prepare for and conduct facilitation of small and large meetings. One-third of the workshop helps participants prepare for facilitating a meeting, and during the remaining two-thirds each participant team demonstrates facilitation of a meeting and receives critique and comments from other participants and faculty.
Futures Without Violence will develop additional workshops based on the need and funding.
 
WORKSHOP FORMAT AND METHODOLOGY
All I-LED workshops are multidisciplinary and most of them anticipate participants with various levels of experience, attending the programs in teams. Workshop faculty consists of a multidisciplinary, multicultural team that fluctuates depending on the anticipated audience background. I-LED workshops address the need for both basic and advanced training of multidisciplinary justice system and nongovernmental professionals and volunteers through the use of interactive, experiential learning methods based on the personal and professional experiences that participants bring to the classroom as part of the education process in a peer to peer format. Expertise of workshop faculty serves to move all participants forward in enhancing their education/training development and presentation skills.
 

UPCOMING PROGRAMS
I-LED plans to offer additional workshops during 2013. The dates and locations are to be determined. Please check this site at a later date or contact Keiko Takano, ktakano@futureswithoutviolence.org to be placed on the I-LED mailing list.

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