Philosophy
One of the first organizations in the U.S. to provide women’s self-defense, Peace Over Violence has been empowering women and children to prevent crime and victimization for more than twenty years. Committed to the prevention of violence against women and to community education, we offer self-defense classes to women and children in businesses, community organizations and schools. Our programs are designed to empower women and children to prevent crime and victimization, break the myths surrounding violence against women, and develop simple, easy-to-use self-defense techniques.
Participation in self-defense classes encourages you to think in terms of options and choices, develops your awareness and assertiveness skills and provides practice for physical self-defense techniques. It expands the way you think about violence prevention, helps you deal with your fears and enables you to feel more empowered in your life.
Ideally, a good self-defense program should reflect these philosophical points:
- Women do not ask for, cause, invite or deserve to be assaulted. Women and men sometimes exercise poor judgment about behavior, but that does not make them responsible for the attack.
- Whatever a woman’s decision in a given self-defense situation, her decision to survive the best way she can must be respected. Self-defense classes should not be used as judgment against a victim/survivor.
- Good self-defense programs do not tell an individual what she “should” or “should not” do. A good program offers options, techniques, and a way of analyzing situations, including a full range of strategy-building. A program may point out what usually works best in most situations, but each situation is unique, and the final decision rests with the person actually confronted by the situation.