Change is a process, not an event. Empowering individuals is partly a process of healing previous hurt or pain and disempowerment. Change cannot be forced on anyone. When individuals can work through past pain, they can arrive at creative, productive, nonviolent solutions to their problems. Individuals come with respect for another's humanity.
Humans possess a core being of love, vivacity, intelligence, cooperativeness, and curiosity.
VIP encourages participants to recognize that each human being has the potential to possess these qualities. In any group of people, there is tremendous healing power. VIP assumes that each individual is an expert on his or her own experience. Collectively, all the members in the VIP group have all the information and experiences they need to help one another. Our greatest resource is our community.