2023 Year in Review
2023 was an exciting and productive year for SCRJI with many new projects and collaborations to report. We continued to develop and grow our work educating and training groups on restorative justice, repair harm, and circle practice through our focused RJ skills workshops.
However, 2023 was also the year of Community Care, as we directed more of our time and resources to the community-building prong of SCRJI’s mission. This meant developing programs centered around the goal of empowering communities to relearn the skills and practices needed to support and care for each other when systems fail to meet our needs. One way we put this plan into action was through our first ever “Community Care Weekend” held in November in collaboration with Coastal Carolina University and WREN. Participants were exposed to a range of workshops led by different practitioners on topics related to transformative justice, rethinking public safety, emotional well-being, and repairing interpersonal conflict or harm. This weekend of workshops was just the first installment of our “Liberatory Education Series,” which we have plans to continue, in collaboration with our community partners, in 2024.
2023 also saw the launch of several local community circles that continue to meet regularly. Some of these circles are private by virtue of the communities or issues they engage with, but some like the “Story Circles” program (now called “Stories Telling Us”) reached a wide audience that grew and morphed over the course of our monthly meetings. We began “Stories Telling Us” in May of 2023, in collaboration with the Agape Table and Torres Fontain, with the goal of creating a space for creativity, fellowship, solidarity, and joy for Black, brown, and queer folks. Our first meeting of 2024 will be Thursday, February 29 and will continue to be held on the last Thursday of each month.
One month into 2024, we are already building and expanding upon the work we did in 2023 with plans in the works for more “Community Care” weekends, RJ skills workshops, community circles, and more. Please sign up for our email list on our Connect page to stay in the loop and join us in the coming year.