CAYAP's Programs

CANEI - Constant and Never-Ending Improvement

CANEI improves the lives of troubled teens using a holistic approach to treatment with an emphasis on restorative justice. Azim’s award winning book, Azim ‘s Bardo: From Murder to Forgiveness — a Father Journey, discusses restorative justice and its power to transform lives.

CANEI provides care to male and female youth between the ages of 12-18 who are in need of intensive treatment due to difficult, aggressive or delinquent behavior. These youth exhibit behaviors that place themselves, or others, at risk of harm physically and emotionally. CANEI has been in operation in Columbus, Ohio as a small scale pilot for 3 years working with male youth and was implemented in Atlanta, Georgia in 2004 for female youth.

Youth who will participate in the program may have concomitant mental health disorders or substance abuse disorders. The incidence of single or dual diagnoses in this population is well known and documented. Youth who participate in CANEI will need the ability to participate in the cognitive-behavioral approaches to therapy and treatment used in the program. The mission of CANEI is to productively alter a participant’s cognitive paradigm about violence, engender their lifetime commitment to reject violent behavior, and to cultivate a profound sense of individual responsibility.

CANEI’s philosophy is rooted in a strong belief that:

• Youth grow and develop best when in a positive family-like environment surrounded by caring, committed individuals.

• All youth are capable of positive growth and change including the development of compassion and empathy

• Treatment must be holistic and include principles of restorative justice and nonviolence. This will facilitate change in the mind, body, and soul, thus creating internalized behavioral change.

A core objective of the CANEI program is that it be the last formal treatment program juvenile offenders ever need to complete. Youth appropriate for participation in CANEI will have lived in social and economic environments that have reinforced retribution and violence as accepted, and even required, solutions to problems. The attitudes and behaviors youth bring with them to the program represent survival skills to them. CANET is committed to providing principles and introducing values that can become self- reinforcing behaviors for non-violence and encourage on-going family and community resources and support. Youth can not be expected to accept or internalize behavioral change until they have alternatives they have confidence in. CANET is committed to a standard of never giving up on or ejecting a youth from the program and strives to achieve zero recidivism and family reunification. The binding forces behind these commitments are three distinguishing components:

• The utilization of principles or restorative justice

• A tailored literacy module

• The theory and practice of holistic and spiritual development

CANEI employs a holistic treatment approach comprising motivational, interpersonal, cognitive, behavioral, social learning, and existential components, with the belief that behavioral change cannot occur without mobilizing the powerful energy that resides within an individual. The program is designed to reach participants on an emotional level, not just a behavioral or intellectual level, and allows youth to engage in activities designed to assist in self-exploration or internal decision-making capabilities.

The program also recognizes that youth who have engaged in violent behavior need a soothing environment. The environments many youth are socialized in contain aggressive and violent messages and images. Music, movies, interactive games all present a glamorized and fatalistic sub-context to the lives of young people. The CANET program will offer alternative messages that reduce the frenetic pace of life for many youth. Activities such as meditation, yoga, listening to classical music, and the arts are incorporated as fundamental components in the Engagement and Treatment phase. CANEI also teaches participants to care for the environment, i.e. plants and animals. The empathy displayed by staff toward each youth serves as a model for the empathy we hope to engender within each youth. Participants are made personally accountable to one another for their progress in compassion to others.

A unique aspect of the program is its commitment to youth accepted into the program. Youth are not discharged for lapses in behavior, for rule violations or other actions frequently considered dischargeable offenses in other programs. These opportunities can be used as teachable moments for growth. The motto of CANEI is “we won’t give up until you succeed”.

CANEI programming is comprised of two separate phases:
1) Engage and Treatment, and 2) Restorative Life and After Care.

In addition to utilizing the best practice in community services developed by NYAP over its 30-year history, CANEI also focuses on the following 5 main components:

• Restorative Justice: a recovery model that recognizes that both the victim and perpetrator of an episode of violence are changed forever. According to this model, justice is not served until, 1) the victim is made whole, 2) the perpetrator is integrated into society as a contributing member, and 3) the community is healed.

• Literacy and pragmatic education with an emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic as the fundamental building blocks of one’s ability to successfully participate in the workforce and make one’s way in life.

• Spirituality: the personal exploration of one’s connectedness to others and meaning in the world. “Ahisma”, the Sanskrit word for truth and nonviolence is the underpinning of CANEI’s spiritual component. Responsibility for choices and actions is taught through spiritual development, refection, mediation, yoga, rites of passage, personal mastery and other practices that inspire insight necessary to behavior change.

• Nonviolence: Youths and families learn the methods and theories of violence reduction in their lives at crucial moments and learn the use of conflict resolution as a means of resolving issues.

• Advocacy:  Youths will be assigned an advocate-a mature man or woman-who will assist them in their abilities to build relationships with adults.  Also, the youths will learn that they are part of their community and they can help to promote a civil society that is beneficent for every member of the community. 

Azim Khamisa founded the Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF) following the tragic shooting death of his only son, Tariq, on January 21, 1995. Mr. Khamisa, after starting TKF, reached out in forgiveness to Ples Felix, the grandfather and guardian of Tariq’s killer. Both men now work together as a team teaching Ahisma. Over TKF’s history they have reached over 350,000 children and youths in live programming and another 18 million students via a national television broadcast by Channel One.


Intensive In-Home

CANEI can be successfully implemented while a youth lives in his/her own home if there is at least one adult in the home physically and emotionally available to support, guide and monitor the youth’s progress. In this model the teen joins others involved in the program at a neighborhood site for up to twenty (20) hours of programming per week for a minimum of twelve (12) weeks.

Therapeutic Foster Care

Specially trained foster parents serve one or two adolescents at any given time. Foster homes are organized in geographic clusters with not more than fifteen (15) homes per cluster. Supported by licensed professional staff and lay mentors known as advocates, foster parents work as team members to reinforce and integrate the values, skills, and philosophies of CANEI into their home and the youth’s daily life.

Site Specific CANEI

This is an abbreviated CANEI program offered via group therapy to young people living in residential treatment centers or institutions of confinement. Generally meeting two (2) times per week for two (2) hour sessions, youth are introduced to the core concepts of CANEI and encouraged to begin a process of self-examination and personal growth. Upon release from residential or institutional placement, youth may then be referred to the Intensive In-Home or Therapeutic Foster Care component of CANEI.

For more information on CANEI or any of CAYAP's programs please contact us!