Partnerships

Throughout 2024 and 2025 Growing Pain Solutions (GPS), in partnership with AVP-DC, has worked alongside Friendship Place to facilitate transformative workshops across their three locations—Valley Place, La Casa, and Neighbors First—in Washington, DC. Together, we’ve brought experiential learning, conflict resolution, and emotional intelligence tools to both staff and community members, helping to strengthen relationships, build trust, and promote nonviolent communication within supportive housing programs. This collaboration continues to demonstrate the power of community partnerships in creating spaces for growth, understanding, and lasting change.  

Herbert Robinson and Growing Pain Solutions (GPS) are proud partners in the Unlock The Box Coalition, both in Washington, DC and nationwide. Together, we’re working to end the use of solitary confinement and push for humane, restorative practices within correctional systems. Through advocacy, education, and community mobilization, GPS helps amplify the voices of directly impacted individuals and families calling for change. Our efforts in DC are strengthened by the leadership and commitment of our champion, Councilmember Brianne K. Nadeau, whose continued support has been vital in advancing local policy and public awareness around ending solitary confinement. This campaign reflects GPS’s core mission—transforming pain into purpose and building a justice system rooted in dignity, accountability, and healing. 

Unlock the Box is a national advocacy campaign aimed at ending solitary  confinement in all U.S. prisons, jails, detention facilities, and juvenile facilities, and bringing the United States into full compliance with the UN’s Mandela Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners within 10 years.