Preventing Violence Through Education
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
- Viktor Frankl
About Us
Project Hummingbird seeks to prevent violent encounters by bringing principles of situational awareness, behavioral and threat analysis, de-escalation, and conflict resolution to everyone. We believe that these potentially life saving skills are not “speciality skills” reserved for security professionals. Everyone deserves to live their life safe and free of danger. Through education, we can all be empowered to keep ourselves, our loved ones, and our co-workers safe.
What Makes Us Different
All of our courses are designed to work with your existing Learning Management System (LMS), ensuring that they are totally scalable regardless of how many employees require training or where they are located.
By fitting seamlessly into an existing workplace education program, it is easy to monitor and ensure compliance, while making it easy for employers to maintain compliance amid turnover or rapid growth.
Our learning format provides employees with the flexibility to take training at their own pace and on their own time.
Our trainings are dynamic and interactive. Learners will not be able to let the course play in the background - they are required to engage and contribute to their own learning.
All courses are fully customizable, allowing employers to convey important policies and procedures within course content. This is particularly important for conveying how and where to report safety concerns.
This course format allows employers to capture valuable data on the effectiveness of the course and feedback on the accessibility and efficacy of existing programs.
The Problem
Everyone deserves to live their life safe and free of danger, and yet, critical life saving skills are often reserved for security professionals, and even in these professions they are often considered “specialty” training and not widely offered.
The ability to detect and respond to threats is a skill we all need. And yet, we rarely place any value on prevention until after we have been a victim of an act of violence do we place value on prevention. Project Hummingbird can teach you how to be proactive, instead of reactive, when it comes to your own personal safety and the safety of those around you. It will arm you with the skills to detect and respond to threats before they become an act of violence, and drastically decrease the likelihood that you experience a devastating incident in the first place.
Preventing Workplace Violence
While tragic and violent events do happen, life-threatening scenarios account for a fraction of our life experiences, and yet they occupy a large amount of our time, attention, and imagination. The fact is the vast majority of situations can be resolved peacefully, but security professionals are trained to expect and focus on worst-case scenarios. Officers require equal, or more, training to develop the critical skills needed to deal with the people in conflict. Project Hummingbird provides tools and training designed to create space between initial encounters and physical responses.
Detecting the Next Mass Shooter
The threat of mass shootings is increasing exponentially. Since 2013, mass shootings in the United States have nearly tripled. The number of mass shootings in the US has increased a whopping 48% in just 5 years from 2018-2022. It may seem like an act of violence will never happen to you, and hopefully you are right, but we all share the responsibility to detect and stop the next active shooter. Targeted violence follows a predictable series of behavior and active shootings are preventable if people around the shooter know what to look for and how to report warning behaviors. After every single attack, when the friends and family of the shooter are interviewed, they say they wish they could have done something to stop it. We are going to teach you how.
Improving Situational Awareness
Situational Awareness is paying attention to things happening around you in terms of where you are and whether anyone or anything surrounding you may threaten your health and safety. Good situational awareness allows you to stay safe and avoid or escape potentially dangerous situations. While it may be simple, it's not always easy. Good situational awareness is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced to be effective.
Preventing Violence Through De-escalation
For many people, dealing with hostile people is part of the job description. Everyone from security professionals to nurses to teachers to retail workers can create a safer workplace by diffusing a potentially hostile situation before it becomes a violent one.
Complement to Tactical Training
While tragic and violent events do happen, life-threatening scenarios account for a fraction of our life experiences, and yet they occupy a large amount of our time, attention, and imagination. The fact is the vast majority of situations can be resolved peacefully, but security professionals are trained to expect and focus on worst-case scenarios. Officers require equal, or more, training to develop the critical skills needed to deal with the people in conflict. Project Hummingbird provides tools and training designed to create space between initial encounters and physical responses.
Advocacy and Thought Leadership
Project Hummingbird supports government, NGO, and non-profit initiatives to curb gun violence and compel and empower law enforcement agencies to receive additional training in mental health and de-escalation. We also work with domestic violence (DV) survivor organizations to support DV recovery and awareness programs, and the mental health advocacy community to push for additional resources in addressing mental illness so the responsibility for dealing with the nation’s mental health crisis does not fall predominately to first responders
Safety is a Skill for EVERYONE
Police Officers
Use “soft” skills to avoid hands-on encounters with the public, recognize volatile situations and avoid violent escalation, and rebuild trust with local communities.
Protective Agents
Understand behavior threat analytics frameworks, elicit information, build partnerships, and avoid potentially violent interactions.
Security Professionals
Avoid on-site incidents, augment executive protection efforts, and prevent reputational damage.
Retail workers
Better predict and respond to tense, unpredictable, and potentially violent situations.
Healthcare Workers
Prepare for and control encounters with agitated, inebriated, or mentally unstable patients and families.
Educators
Prepare for active shooters, unstable students, and unpredictable situations by recognizing predictable behavior patterns.
Supporting Safe & Harmonious Workplaces
Executive Protection
Avoid violence by de-escalating conflicts, collecting better information about potential threat actors, and being more proactive in detecting threats
Human Resources
Diversify training sessions and workshops with a fresh approach to constructive conflict
Team Building
Learn techniques to navigate and grow from conflict within and between teams
Corporate Security Teams
Provide a customer-focused approach while maintaining a safe and welcoming workplace, detect and respond to insider threats