The McCoy Company
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This webpage provides details about Violence Interruption Experience (VIE) background and training and technical assistance interventions. It does not provide information on The McCoy Company's "Zero Casualties in Schools" initiative. You can view a brief YouTube presentation on Zero Casualties (click here) or visit our Zero Casualties in Schools webpage (click here).
If you are interested in receiving a copy of a newspaper article, concept paper, or a proposal on how VIE can help you or your organization, send an e-mail to The McCoy Company to learn more about VIE and how it can work for you.
Lastly, William McCoy can come to your event, gathering, or venue to talk, train, or teach you and/or an audience of your choice. Call (614) 785-8497 or e-mail him by clicking the button (envelope) shown below.
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VIE Background
The McCoy Company is one the nation’s leading proponents of the Violence Interruption Experience (VIE). VIE is a high-impact, experiential approach to attitudinal and behavioral change, which tackles the explosive issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and power in a way that helps people conquer the violence in their lives, build relationships with others, and change for the better.
VIE uncovers the root causes of why people think and act as they do. VIE blows away other tired, timid approaches to confronting and overcoming the “stuff” that gets in the way of building relationships with others.
VIE is a unique intervention that changes attitudes, behaviors, and lives. This powerful human relations training was originally developed for and used with hardcore offenders (including murderers, sex offenders, KKK, and gangs in adult and juvenile youth jails, prisons, and substance abuse treatment facilities.
VIE has been embraced by police and fire training academies, justice systems, crime victim services, colleges and universities, high schools, social service providers, youth gangs, and the National Football League. VIE was called the “Real McCoy” by the Arizona Informant. More than 100,000 people have been exposed to the VIE way of working, since 1994.
One of VIE’s underlying tenants is that information alone does not change attitudes and behaviors. Changing attitudes and behaviors requires an intervention that goes beyond a “cognitive” approach that appeals solely to “logic.” Tapping into a person’s personal experience allows them to uncover the root causes of why they think and act as they do. With safety, healing, liberation, and justice as its foundation, VIE reaches people of all kinds and promotes positive attitudinal and behavioral change.
VIE interventions are ideal for addressing racism and bias, police brutality and excess use of force, sexual harassment and violence in the workplace, school violence (e.g. bullying, violence against women, racial problems, working with people of color or youth, and/or in schools (click here.)
VIE Interventions
VIE training and technical assistance:
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Increases participant's self-knowledge, interpersonal skills and competencies;
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Promotes attitudinal and behavioral change; and
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Builds trust, teamwork, and camaraderie.
VIE Basic Training lasts two to four days and is prescriptive (i.e. sculpted to meet your specific needs and situation). VIE employs a "dialogical encounter," which draws upon five clinical genres and moves participants through various phases of the Insight and Outlook continuum and 7-Step Change Model.
VIE training helps participants:
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Raise their "emotional intelligence;"
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Recognize, resist, and interrupt the violence in their hearts, minds, and lives;
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Deal more effectively with anger and negative attitudes, behaviors, and people; and
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Build positive relationships with others.
The VIE core curriculum includes (but is not limited to):
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Uncovering the roots of male violence and female violence and victimization;
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Power dynamics in our relationships and lives;
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Coping with anger, violence, and negative attitudes and behaviors;
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Racism, sexism, adultism, homophobism, and other "isms;" and
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Building relationships and alliances with others.
As noted, our VIE Training of Trainers, will equip and empower you to do this work on your own. This will allow you to adapt and use VIE programming independent of The McCoy Company.
James Bryant, superintendent of a juvenile facility said, "The biggest problem we had with VIE was keeping VIE-trained staff, who got hired by others."
Call or e-mail William McCoy for additional information or to arrange a one-hour VIE preview session, VIE workshop, or VIE training intervention. Mr. McCoy can be reached at (614) 785-8497 or click the button below to send him an e-mail.
Public Speaking
William McCoy is a sought-after public speaker, who is available for large or small gatherings. Mr. McCoy has and will speak to groups with as few as three people or audiences numbering in the thousands. He has spoken at staff meetings and international conferences. William McCoy has also attracted standing-room only crowds.
Mr. McCoy crafts his messages to be both educational and entertaining. His instructional style draws from many disciplines and frequently combines psychodrama, storytelling with other activities to create a unique, impactful, and valuable instructional experience.
This approach allows people to acquire knowledge, skills, and competencies faster and more effectively than conventional didactic or teacher-student approaches.
Like Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, William McCoy believes our “ontological vocation" is to understand, act upon, and transform the world. His training and public speaking interventions are designed to do just that. William McCoy creates a “dialogical encounter” to help people use their personal experiences to look at and analyze situations and solve problems.