BRAVE People

Building Resources for Anti-Violence Education
BRAVE People is an innovative grassroots organization founded to stop violence and its impact on our citizens and our society. BRAVE People teaches at-risk youth how to live safe, healthy lives. BRAVE People also offers our courses to community groups, schools, and businesses.

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A BRAVE COURSE
encompasses violence prevention; healthy mind and body education; communications skills and peer resistance techniques; understanding the media and how to use it, and economic skills. This comprehensive approach for at-risk youth will ensure that they have the tools to stop violence. Learn more

Video clip from documentary on violence against women and self-defense
Featuring Eve Ensler of V-Day & Helen Grieco's A BRAVE Course.

BRAVE People

BRAVE People is a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping violence and its impact on our citizens and our society. Its founders, Helen Grieco and Patrick Phair, have worked extensively in the Bay Area teaching community groups, businesses and government agencies. Some of their clients include: The Center for Young Women’s Development, Community United Against Violence, Hospitality House, Peets Coffee, and the Women’s Bureau of the Federal Department of Labor.

Founders

BRAVE People was founded by the owners of Defending Ourselves Self Defense School, Helen Grieco and Patrick Phair. Grieco and Phair have trained over 10,000 students in their A Brave Course curriculum. Their course has proven to be successful in getting youth out of gangs, back to school and onto productive lives, and in reducing violence and the incident of hate crimes against women, girls and the LGBTQQI community.

Grieco is a self defense instructor, nonprofit director, therapist, media consultant and social activist with more then 20 years of successful grassroots organizing experience on issues affecting women, girls, youth and the LGBTQQI community. Grieco is also an author and has produced several films for women and girls on their health and safety.

Phair is a self-defense, martial arts and weapons expert who has earned an array of belt rankings and certification in professional combatives. He is also an F.M. Alexander teacher, bodyworker, counselor and an emergency medical technician.

Together they bring the history and experience necessary to understand the needs of the population they serve: Grieco was raised in a family plagued with domestic violence, poverty and alcoholism, and Phair is a survivor of assault.

Helen Grieco and Patrick Phair are also the founders of the SHE Academy, dedicated to teaching sustainable living and leadership, and educating safe, healthy, economically independent advocates and leaders.

Read Helen's story: Standing up to Abuse.
Read a piece on Helen and BRAVE People: Woman Warrior
Read Preparing Young Women
or read it as an archived PDF

Board

President, Patrick Phair

VP, Helen Grieco

Secretary, Jeanmarie Kolb

Treasurer, Eva Harvey

Advisory Board

Melissa Abercrombie, Petaluma Youth Commissioner

Marelene Sanchez, Executive Director, Center for Young Women's Development

Lateefah Simon, MacArthur Fellow, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights

Staff

Executive Director
Catalina Castillo

Program Director
Patrick Phair

Communications Director
Rachel Allen

Instructors
Patrick Phair