Green Dot L-A wasn’t able to celebrate its second anniversary the way the group would have liked because the coronavirus pandemic put the group’s popular bystander intervention training workshops on ice in March. However, its importance hasn’t stopped.

The group, according to its Facebook page, consists of “local volunteers teaching safe, effective strategies to reduce harassment, assault and interpersonal violence.” Training workshops were planned for March through June before the pandemic struck the country.

Green Dot L-A officially launched in March 2018, but the sentiment behind the group’s movement was devised in late 2016 by a group of women calling themselves Community of Kindness.

“It was really frustrating to have to stop at a point when we were having workshops fill up quickly and people talking about what we were doing in a positive way,” said Cindy Elias, one of the group’s founding members.

“The power of this, for me, as I see these trainings continue, and I see people coming to the trainings, all different ages, all different backgrounds, it just shows the power that a small group of people can have,” said Peggy Rotundo, another founding member. “Because this started with a conversation (between Cindy and I) meeting on a walk, where we started saying ‘We don’t like what’s happening in this community now,’ in terms of the nasty things being said to people. ‘We don’t like the atmosphere that is evolving’ after the (2016) election. ‘We want to do something positive about it.'”

Elias said the group held very successful workshops in January and February. Workshops scheduled for the following months “were filling up quite fast and we were having very positive feedback on what we were doing,” Elias said.

“So everybody, like all kinds of organizations, we had to step back and say ‘What can we do? And what can’t we do,'” Elias added. “Our instructors are working on a virtual form of our workshop presentation.”

Elias’ husband, Peter, is one of the instructors working on that presentation.

“I think it’s important to make it clear that our overviews and our workshops are quite interactive,” Peter Elias said. “It’s not standing on a stage talking about stuff. We have the participants actively involved in activities, and that isn’t something to quickly and easily transition from a live presentation to an online presentation.

“So we’ve been meeting regularly — virtually — since March, talking about different options and preparing,” he said. “We’re in the last stages now of actually putting together and testing it, so hopefully by the middle or end of September we will be live again. We will be doing things actively in the community again.”

Peter Elias said that despite the workshops going into hibernation, the group’s importance and its initiative is still “huge.”

“But it’s a little different because before, people had more likelihood that they would see things happening in a public setting because people were gathering a lot more, so people who are close together in the big-box stores or at social events,” he said. “A lot of that, now, people are farther apart, or staying home entirely, and a lot more interactions are happening in social media, online.

“There are techniques that we talk about through doing both reactive and proactive interventions, and some of them are online,” he said. “We have to kind of change our focus a little bit. One of the issues that we’ve been hearing about is harassment or bullying or verbal attacks about whether somebody is or isn’t wearing a mask, and so teaching people how to comfortably and safely diffuse those situations is something that’s very pertinent.”

Cindy Elias said she thinks the group has made an impact in the community during the first two-plus years since it launched.

“I think that it’s one of the things that’s hard to measure, and it’s not the kind of impact that happens quickly or overnight,” she said. “We’re trying to give people the tool for being safe and effective bystanders, and you don’t do that in a blink of an eye. That takes time. What I will say is that we have a lot of positive response to what we’re doing in our workshops.”

Peter Elias brought up an anecdote about being in a checkout line at a store when the cashier was able to diffuse a “potentially bad situation.” After complimenting the cashier, Elias learned that the young man had heard about Green Dot from a family member who had taken part in a workshop, so he knew what to do in that setting.

“That was an example of how this stuff sort of spreads, like ripples on a pond,” Peter Elias said.

Rotundo also used the ripple effect analogy when talking about Green Dot L-A’s growth from her initial conversation with Cindy Elias. Rotundo played a key role in the Community of Kindness partnering with Alteristic, which is the parent organization of the Green Dot movement. Rotundo works for Bates College, which had previously used the Green Dot program on campus, and still does.

Peter Elias said Green Dot L-A and the Green Dot program at Bates overlap some, but the training is a little different.

Rotundo said Community of Kindness worked with Alteristic to create a special curriculum for the Green Dot L-A program because the organization hadn’t done a program in a community like Lewiston-Auburn.

Creating the special program required the group to raise $30,000, according to Rotundo, “to be able to pay for the development of the curriculum and pay for the training.”

She said much of the funding came from Bangor Savings Bank. The group also partnered with YWCA Central Maine, which became Green Dot L-A’s fiscal sponsor.

“In 2017, YWCA Central Maine partnered with Community of Kindness to bring Green Dot Bystander Intervention Instructor Training to the Lewiston-Auburn community. The decision to become fiscal sponsor was made as the training and information being disseminated so easily aligned with the mission of the YWCA — to eliminate racism and empower women,” YWCA Central Maine Executive Director Melanie LaMore Gagnon said.

“Green Dot was a partner in our collaborate efforts at last year’s YWCA Stand Against Racism and provided one of our breakout sessions during this event. YWCA continues to proudly support the work of Green Dot L-A.”

Cindy Alias added, “We needed to raise money to bring Green Dot here, and (YWCA Central Maine) very kindly helped us out in that regard. And also did promotion, getting our name out there. And as the years have gone on, that’s evolved. They are still our fiscal agent, but the Green Dot instructors and the steering committee have sort of taken over the management.”

“But it’s still a good overlapping, mutually supportive relationship,” Peter Elias added.

The new, virtual workshops the group is planning to put on, which Peter Elias said likely will take place via Zoom meetings, open up new possibilities for Green Dot L-A.

“We were actually somewhat concerned that the amount of interest and requests for workshops was going to outstrip … the ability of our volunteers to coalesce on dates and find venues,” Elias said. “There are surprisingly few public places that are available and not already scheduled in the Lewiston-Auburn area.”

Past workshops had taken place at such locations as Edward Little High School in Auburn and the Lewiston Public Library.

Elias said workshops generally were limited to 25 people, but that smaller groups seemed to be even more successful and enjoyable. He is hoping to do a “dress rehearsal” workshop for eight to 10 people.

“In our community, everybody can be a hero, everybody can be kind, everybody can be helpful to others to help bring out the very best in each other and in our community. Because this is who we are, Lewiston and Auburn, we’re good people,” Rotundo said.

“At a time when things can feel very dark in the world, I just think it’s important to remind people that we can create light ourselves. We can say, ‘We want to live in a community where people get along, where we respect each other, where we’re going to help each other,’ and that’s what Green Dot L-A is all about.”

Copy the Story Link