Ways to Help
Initiatives & Involvement
We invite you to join our mission.
Together, we can make a lasting impact in healing trauma and building hope in our community.
Initiative: Become a sustaining, monthly contributor
Becoming a sustaining, monthly contributor is an effective way to ensure that your funds make a lasting impact.
We are asking donors to partner with us to ensure our organization sustains its mission.
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Click on the donate button at the bottom of this page and select which fund you would like to contribute to, and check the box next to monthly donations. Select “use my funds where needed most” if you do not wish to designate a particular fund.
Initiative: Restorative Justice
Currently, we operate the Adult Restorative Justice Program for Leon and surrounding Counties and we are grant-funded through the City of Tallahassee. However, if you would like to see Restorative Justice grow in our community, please consider donating to this fund.
Your donation can help us taking on more cases. You can click on the Donate button and select “Restorative Justice”.
Initiative: Community Connections Peer Mentors
This initiative provides stipends to selected graduates from the Community Connections Program to come back and volunteer as peer mentors. These individuals support other teens in developing empathetic communication skills within the program.
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Community Connections teaches empathetic communication skills to teens referred to the program through diversion, a part of probation, or simply community referrals.
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While this program is sometimes called a Restorative Justice program, Community Connections does NOT currently faciliate restorative justice conferences for the teens in its program. This is something Connection First has been eager and willing to offer for our community.
Involvement: Volunteer with Our Restorative Services
We are seeking volunteers to participate in criminal cases through our RJ -adjacent model called Community Conferencing. This model allows trained community members to serve as surrogate impacted parties or community representatives when a harmed party is not directly involved in the faciliated dialogue.
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Community Conference (CC) Participant
As a volunteer, you’ll:
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Sit in on Conferences to either represent the broader community’s interest in healing, accountability, and repair OR serve as a surrogate impacted party if you've experienced a similar harm
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Help ensure a meaningful, dialogue-based process even when a directly harmed person isn’t present
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Receive training and support from Connection First to prepare for your role
This is a powerful way to contribute to restorative justice in action—especially for cases where the harmed party declines to participate but still deserves a process rooted in accountability and reflection.
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Interested in learning more? Reach out to juliana@connectionfirst.org.
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Interested in volunteering in the above capacity? Please complete the CC Training Manual below.