Marc Forget is an educator and facilitator from Alberta, Canada, who works in the fields of justice, human rights, and nonviolence. He is trained in

• victim-offender mediation
  
• community mediation
  
• dialogue facilitation
  
• peacemaking circle keeping.  

The core of Marc’s work over the past five years has been in the field of restorative justice, working nationally on education initiatives and at the local level with communities that are establishing restorative alternatives to the current retributive system.    

Marc devotes half of his working life to volunteering with projects such as

• training AVP (Alternatives to Violence Project) facilitators around the world
  
• conducting workshops on healing from racism (notably in South Africa)
  
• mediating conflicts.

He has had extensive experience facilitating group processes with Aboriginal peoples on three continents.  

Marc regularly speaks at universities, symposia and congresses around the world on issues such as restorative justice, nonviolence, punishment, and prison abolition.  

He is co-founder of the Deep Humanity Institute, a non-profit corporation headquartered in Calgary, Alberta.  Marc creates workshops in community building, peacemaking and personal development for the school (K-12), workplace, and community environments.  

A chronology of Marc's restorative justice activities would include:

• 1994, began involvement in human rights and violence issues affecting prisoners in Canada and numerous other countries
  
• 1996, became responsible for the programs of the Quaker Committee on Jails & Justice (He still holds this position)
  
• 1997, participated in the first national symposium aimed at documenting the development of restorative justice in Canada April
  
• 2000 was a delegate to the 10th UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. 
  

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When justice is reduced to nothing more than a matter of punishment, it becomes a simple game of vengeance where pain begets pain.

If humanity is ever to achieve any peace, we must redefine justice as the process that allows us all to continue living together after one has caused harm to another in our midst.

Justice, therefore, has to be measured by how peacefully and productively we coexist, not by how severely we punish those found responsible for a transgression.

 

[From Quaker Concern (Winter 2001-2002) 27(4): 6]

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Leading Edge. Drawing on restorative justice principles to address conflicts in British Columbia's schools, he is working to establish constructive processes and to develop and implement follow-on programs aimed at reducing violence.  His audiences ranges from high school students to federal parole officers, and he facilitates these events across Canada as well as in the United States.

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Reach Marc Forget at marc@deephumanity.org

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