The Training Active Bystanders (TAB) program helps participants recognize when they are bystanders, analyze situations, and evaluate the consequences for everyone involved. TAB heightens bystanders’ power. It teaches how bystanders can interrupt harm doing and generate positive actions by others. Active bystandership does not mean aggression against the harm doer. It means taking responsible action to help people in need instead of remaining passive and becoming complicit. Bystanders gain the competencies they need if they decide to take action when they witness something they feel is unfair, or wrong, or troubling.
A bystander is a person who witnesses harm occuring. The bystander can either ignore the harm being done or can take action to stop it.
TAB gives you the tools you need to be an active bystander and take positive action in a situation when harm is occuring.
Youth trainers are at the heart of TAB. With conviction and passion, they transform the curriculum into something personally meaningful for their peers, encouraging them to exert power to encourage positive personal interactions and to create just and caring schools and communities.
Workshops in social service agencies, community coalitions, libraries, LGBTQ groups, social justice and multicultural organizations, Human Rights Committees, houses of worship (temples, mosques, churches), substance abuse prevention task forces, and more.
Use TAB in the workplace to create an improved workplace atmosphere where all employees feel safe. Other settings are places of higher education, prisons and jails, and organizations which deal with substance use and recovery.
Contact us to learn how we can create the most effective training for your school, place of worship, organization, or workplace.
The Northwestern District Attorney, in collaboration with Quabbin Mediation, held a Youth Conference for school students on October 26, 2018. A key part of the conference was the Training Active Bystanders curriculum. The trainers were students from the Athol, Mahar, Pioneer Valley Regional, and Granby high schools.