Touché

I am Marjan Gryson, a clinical and forensic psychologist and solution-focused psychotherapist. I am intrigued by aggression in all its forms and meanings, the way we all deal with it, and especially the question how to use its energy for positive purposes. I co-founded Touché to make the world more positively aggressive. I also co-founded The Houses / Rescaled, with the mission to create a new detention system that is small scaled, nearby and differentiated. Since 2015 I can proudly call myself Ashoka Fellow and consciously identify myself as a social entrepreneur.  

Touché develops activities to make the relationship we all have with aggression more constructive and sustainable, with a special focus on (ex-)prisoners and youth at risk. We envision a safe, positive, respectful world in which people are realizing positive goals with their aggressive energy, finding worthy alternatives, both for damaging conflicts and violence and for punishment (which sometimes just is another form of damaging violence). Young people will grow up learning to recognise, control, channel and use the energy underneath their aggression to get positive things done. 

Touché (re-)connects individual, relational and systemic solutions, offering solution focused projects, teaching people and systems how to deal with their own aggressive energy. 

Treating people in a human way creates a safe society. Teaching people to cope with their own aggression makes a liveable society. Helping people to use their strength positively in their lives and relationships leads to a more talented society.

Violence and our reaction to it only causes damage & loss. Anger and fear form a vicious circle that creates an even bigger problem. 1/3 of people all over the world ever uses or undergoes violence at some point, and another 1/3 lives in fear for violence. Each day 4,000 people die, and 120,000 people end up in hospital due to violence. The Belgian economy spends 20 billion euro, or 1,829 euro per person, on violence every year. On a global level, the expenditure is 14.3 % of GDP. The global economic impact of violence has increased by 15 % since 2008.

The anger-anxiety circle increases repressive and aggressive reactions. The most common answer to aggression is repression and exclusion. This is a unilateral response to a multiple problem, and therefore not constructive, nor effective. This is shown in our prison system, a symbol of our failing aggression policy. 50% of all prisoners have aggression problems and difficulties reintegrating into society. 57.6% of Belgian inmates relapse into criminal behaviour. Prisoners are unproductive and a big social cost. The Belgian state’s daily cost per prisoner is 217 €, or 79,205 € per year. Recidivism is highest among violent offenders with 75%.

Aggression is part of human nature. Anger is part of every human being. Violence has always been part of human history. Aggression is a possible strength, not (only) a problem. Aggression is manageable. Aggression-related problems can be solved. We can benefit from the power in aggressive energy. Anger is a signal showing something important is happening. Aggressive energy leads to action, movement, change. Sustainable human relations offer answers to exclusion, polarisation and a society in crisis. 

Touché offers & develops solution focused therapy, projects, trainings, campaigns, events and workshops, teaching people how to deal with their own aggressive energy, by learning to recognise, control and channel it and to use the power underneath in a positive way, as strength, creativity, passion, to realise positive life goals.

Touché (re-)integrates people with aggression-related problems. We create opportunities for people to co-create their own and each other’s solutions together. We create new roles for (ex-)prisoners and new perspectives on (ex-)prisoners at the same time. Therefore, we train (ex-)prisoners to become mentors for youngsters, we organise encounters between (ex-)prisoners and citizens, we set up media campaigns to tell positive and successful stories, …

We make solution focused support accessible for everybody who is struggling with his or her own aggressive energy, especially for youngsters and (ex-)prisoners (as they often don’t have access to this kind of support). We offer and combine preventive, curative and restorative services, by training people to become mentors for others themselves. By doing that, we create new social roles for and new perspectives on a social group that is often labelled as dangerous, full of risk, … This increases successful reintegration processes. 

At this moment, we are reaching 4.000 people per year. We create social & economic impact. The social impact on the individual level consists of an increase in (self-)respect, translated in an increase of positive emotions, conflict resolution skills and sustainable relationships. On the societal level the impact consists of (re-)integration and a solution focused justice system, translated into more and quicker re-integration chances, less recidivism, less aggression-related incidents and a constructive policy. An Ashoka & McKinsey study concluded that every €1 invested in Touché regenerates €72 for society. By transforming aggression into a positive force, the number of violent incidents decreases, and the number of successful re-integrations increases.

In order to really solve complex social problems, we need to develop multilevel solutions, connecting stakeholders and combining parts of the solution. Traditional answers to violence are mostly unilateral, e.g. support for ‘victims’, risk assessment and relapse prevention for ‘perpetrators’, and mostly leaving out society as a party that is involved. We think we need everybody together at the table, solving it with each other (instead of against each other). Because some groups (e.g. (ex-)prisoners) are more vulnerable, they should be addressed more specifically. And we need to address emotions, attitudes, behaviours and cultural norms. 

As a clinical psychologist, I entered prison and what I saw and experienced there, made me very angry. I met a lot of both talented ànd struggling people, looking for solutions for their problems. As a psychologist, I knew these solutions exist, but I was not allowed to offer them to the people who needed it. This was a symptom of the prison system being a very unhealthy, inefficient, unreliable system for everybody involved. This system is not solving any problem, it only creates more problems. 

Realising all of this, I consciously felt the power of my anger, and the importance of the choice I had to let it impact me negatively or rather use it positively. I was lucky to be surrounded by others who wanted to support me in setting up a project and an organisation.

I think, feel, experience that once you stepped into a system and looked people in the eyes who are directly affected by a system that we, as citizens and thus part of this system, are creating and keeping alive, you cannot just step back as if you don’t know about it. Especially when you also know solutions are possible, feasible, accessible, … To me it would feel like committing a crime if I would not act by offering these solutions. In the meantime, I also know the solutions we developed are really working, as the impact is showing up, so this ‘conviction’ has only become stronger throughout the years. Now I’m starting to be surrounded by former ‘clients’ as my colleagues and supporters, and so it became my ambition to be replaced by them in the following period of time. 

I’ve been running this project for the last 13 years, and it’s both proven to be impactful ànd still evolving. My strongest influence on the project though has not so much been my own ideas or activities, but is the fact that I can connect, motivate, inspire, guide, … people to do things they would not do on their own, and without me they would not even think of doing it together with the ones I’m connecting them with (e.g. judges and prisoners working on a project for young people together). 

My co-founders stepped out of the project because of personal reasons. Although these were difficult moments, both for me and the team, in a way my conviction only became stronger and it enforced the choice to create a strong group of people (team, board, partner network, …) supporting the mission of the project, so that it would not depend on specific individuals. I think it helped to become an organization that is both very human and thus ‘people-oriented’, but in a very healthy, independent way. 

Another very difficult moment was when one of our clients who was released on parole, committed a murder. This incident shook and challenged me, our project, our team, all of our other clients, our organisation very fundamentally. It could have been the end of it, but instead it enforced and deepened our choices and values even more, as it ‘forced’ us to walk the talk, even in the most difficult circumstances. 

I’m not a conventional leader, in the sense of being very visibly present. I am a connecting leader, supporting others to become the best versions of themselves. But when it comes down to really important moments, matters or incidents, I am not afraid to take decisions that might have a big impact or that holds risks, especially when ethical matters are at stake. An example of that is the fact that I decided to resign from a project I cofounded when we managed to raise a lot of money to scale up. In my opinion, this money came with too much interference in the project and the organisation, to that extent that we would have to compromise on the mission and values. I resigned and communicated openly about the reason for my decision. This led to various interesting and inspiring conversations, and in the end, I was asked to stay on board, with the invitation to keep on speaking up critically. 

My ‘fuel’ consists of keeping in touch with my own anger and rechannelling its energy in impactful projects, hopeful co-creative experiences with our clients and consequently persevering, and purifying (both simplifying and deepening) the original ideas.

Touché is a nonprofit, but we are exploring the possibilities of a hybrid model at this moment.

It would be easiest and perfectly accepted to keep on ignoring the problems we as a society have with aggression, fear, people who make mistakes and commit crimes, punishment, recidivism after a stay in prison, radicalization processes taking place in prisons, … We put big walls around them, literally in the form of prisons, so it’s easy to pretend as if this problem does not exist or has been taken care of. 

Some key learnings are the fundament of our approach: differentiating and thus polarizing between ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ only creates bigger problems for both parties. ‘Forcing’ people to take up responsibility is a paradox, and thus does not work. Connecting people with their desired future ‘self’, in connection with society, is a more effective and positive strategy than confronting people with the consequences of their mistakes.

What we at Touché do is not only recognizing the problems or trying to fix the current system errors, but  going a step further, by translating the problem into a solution for our society as a whole: aggression as energy to change, ex-prisoners as teachers in moral issues or as mentors for young people, detention houses as an added value for neighborhoods. 

We offer a new perspective on and approach of aggressivity, conflicts, tension. Solution focused encounters, including everyone involved, create new, hopeful identities, relationships and partnerships. 

Reminding people of their own aggression, their solutions to channel it and the potential in it, enables people to make free and constructive choices in their life, and gives them the energy to move into the desired direction. This is especially true for (ex-)prisoners, youngsters, employers and policy makers. As aggression is a relational or interactional ànd systemic problem, the most powerful solution for this negative spiral lies in connecting people and groups with each other. Therefore, we combine actions on several levels at the same time: individual, relational, in organizations & institutions, on community level and at a societal level. 

We offer solution focused therapy, training and events, individually and in group, both curative and preventive, for people struggling with their own anger. We teach people how to deal with their own aggressive energy, by learning to recognize, control and channel it and to use the power underneath in a positive way, as strength, creativity, passion, to realize positive life goals. We have an individual and relational impact, helping people to successfully re-integrate in society as talented, socially skilled and caring citizens. We also create system change, raising awareness and changing the general attitude towards aggression and people struggling with violence, and by helping to build a new, solution focused and future oriented justice and prison system. We are making ourselves superfluous, by leading up our clients to become mentors, coaches and trainers themselves. 

TARGET: aggression, anxiety, repression

ACTIVITIES: therapy programs, training programs, preventive work, campaigns & events, educational programs, lobbying

OUTPUT: 4.000 direct & indirect clients / year

OUTCOME: more (self-)respect, better emotional and social skilled people, experiencing more freedom of choice concerning their (re-)actions, and engaging in more positive and sustainable relationships; a change in the public attitude towards aggression, detention, prisoners and people who make mistakes (more open, constructive and solution-oriented); an adjustment of policies towards a problem-solving, humane, efficient, sustainable, restorative, forgiving penal system that offers solutions to problems that lead to crime

IMPACT: a safer, liveable and more talented society thanks to more successful reintegration of people with aggression-related problems, especially (ex-)prisoners and youngsters 

At this moment, we are reaching 4.000 people per year. We decided not to scale up our direct services, but to scale up our impact by open sourcing our stories, methods and tools and by inspiring others to set up their own impactful projects (by training our clients to become mentors themselves, by offering handbooks, trainings, workshops, … to other organizations, and by focusing on frame-change with storytelling, platform thinking, …). So, we will not directly reach much more direct clients within the coming years (maybe 5.000), but we will indirectly impact many more people at population scale. This also means we focus on impact on the long term, as we want to change society’s attitude, frame, beliefs, … towards violence.  

The problem of violence will stay the same or increase in the coming decade, as social tension, indignation and outrage caused by inequality and disconnection increases and society lacks the skills to deal with aggression, violence, conflicts, people committing crimes. 

Touché has proven its worth and impact at a local level. Our mission now is to 'infect' the world to become positively aggressive, by broadening our scope in terms of target groups and methods. Within 5 years we want to have as many people as possible in different parts of the world (as where I am now only reaching people regionally) looking more positive, hopeful, seeing opportunities, equal, solution focused, empathic, … towards aggressivity, seeing solutions they can engage in or cocreate themselves for complex societal issues (instead of feeling powerless). 

We decided not to scale up our organization in terms of employees or branches in other places (because this would ask too much of our limited time and energy, and would not increase our social impact accordingly), but to focus on 2 developments: create a new experimental hybrid place and make our concept ‘globally applicable’. This will allow us to further develop from delivering services to creating system change, by disseminating and inspiring others rather than to replicate. 

We will further elaborate on the combination of 3 important elements: training ex-prisoners to become solution-focused mentors for others, creating encountering and co-creative contexts for aggression-related problems at society-level, and frame change in the perspective of the broad public. 

Touché is a quite local organization, that has proven its worth and impact at this local level, that consists of a solid team and organizational structure, and that developed a specific methodology to deal with aggression. We are taking the first steps in developing the strategy described above to scale up our impact, but need knowledge, advise, funding and tools in the domains we need expertise in: 

• digital development and tools (as we believe this is the way to reach people at population scale)
• fundraising to aim at system change
• communication strategies to reach people globally, in several languages and across cultures 

We did an extensive strategic exercise for our mission in the coming decade, so everybody is aligned and ally in our plan. We have a strong team to continue and further develop the current operations, and we decided to create space, time and people within the organisation to focus on the future goals. We have a strong partner network (see below) that will help us with complementary skills, and we started the ASPI-Re program with Ashoka and Societal Platform (https://projectaspire.ashoka.org). This 3-year program will help us activate a large social-impact movement through Societal Platform thinking. The 3 barriers mentioned above will be addressed in this program, but we will still need to build capacity ourselves too.

Touché collaborates in appreciative partnerships, which are shaped in transparency, flexibility and independence. We develop, evolve, grow and learn in co-creation with all stakeholders in solutions for violence. Collaboration in a partner network is a crucial choice, based on

- our vision, in which all direct and indirect parties involved in violence must also be involved in the answers (both curative and preventive);  

 - the belief that we need complementary expertise;  

 - establishing that collaboration is the only way to efficiently tackle complex social problems; 

 - the idea that collaboration is the best way to build bridges;  

 - the experience that partners in a project are the strongest ambassadors of the vision behind and the stories about a project.  

When choosing our partners, we give priority to common basic principles and values. We are building a mission-driven partner network to impact the way society handles violence at various levels and ways.

Our current partner network exists of the following partners: 

1) Experienced experts, (ex-)prisoners are our main partners and to be able to do our work with them, the justice department

2) The Ashoka network for cocreations with other Ashoka fellows (e.g. Fight For Peace, Bart Weetjens), support from advisors, networking, impact measurement 

3) Communication experts (ZIGO, Atelier Steve Reynders, Megafoon, Lannoo Campus…) to help us tell our stories 

4) Specific trainers for boxing, meditation, therapy and training  

5) The Houses / Rescaled for the transformation of the prison system

We created a diversified economic model on the income side and a solidarity system on the expenditure side. Our economic choices reflect the values that support our vision: solidarity, independence, commitment, efficiency, quality, innovation, transparency, equality / dignity, inclusion. We are all dealing with aggression as a problem and we need everyone to find solutions for it. We see money as a commitment statement: who gives money and who receives money at Touché becomes an active participant in the search for solutions to aggression problems. Everyone, regardless of his / her financial situation, should have access to the same, high-quality offer. Everyone contributes according to their own possibilities, validates the work they do with us and at the same time makes it possible for others to use it.

Creating partnerships with other organisations, academic partners, companies, consultants, … allowed us to create an organisation that combines individual, relational and social impact. We influence the way people we work with behave, think and feel; we change the attitude of society towards (ex-)prisoners and offer common tools to deal with anger, tension and conflict; we generate economic value for society (a McKinsey study concluded that every 1 € invested in Touché regenerates 72 € for society) and we are partner of the Houses, changing the detention paradigm and legislation. Partners as Porticus, Ashoka and The Venture Philantropy Fund supported us to become an organisation with systemic social impact.

Sustainability is inherent to the activities in the project, as it builds up capacity in its own: (ex-)prisoners who follow Touché’s therapy programs can be trained to become mentors & coaches themselves. This group will grow over time and be able to take over part of the basic activities of Touché. Because they are included in the solution-oriented vision, language and methods, they immediately become the strongest ambassadors for this model, and we ensure that the stories that will come out of this project will automatically be colored in a solution-oriented way, which will also trickle down to wider society. After all, this project focuses not only on results among the direct participants in the activities, but also on a contribution to systemic and social change, towards an inclusive, solution and recovery-oriented view and approach to aggression, crime and detention.

Economically, we now have 43% own revenues, 31% donations and 26% subsidies. Our work involves both loss-making, break-even and profitable activities. Purely economically, our visionary work only ‘costs’ us money in the short term, but will ‘gain’ much more money for society on the long term. As an organization we make this work possible by creating our own revenue streams (e.g. selling products and trainings). The subsidies and donations are used to set up new activities and provide the solidarity system to ensure everybody who needs it can make use of a high-quality offer.

Our annual budget is $ 355.227. 

We have 

• 43% own revenues by selling services (trainings, workshops) and products
• 31% donations from citizens and foundations
• 26% subsidies from the Belgian federal and Flemish government

We need to find funding for the system changing work we do, as this is the part of our work we want to focus on in the coming years. This is another kind of funding than we are used to raising. 

Our estimated expenses for 2020 are $ 432.075 in total. 

Because we simultaneously need 

 - a diverse team (in terms of gender, age, cultural background, professional skills, life experience, …) to guarantee the crossover and qualitative vision development 

- a common stable base to provide for all projects to ensure integration 

- partners with complementary expertise 

- capacity to work on system change

we allocate our resources following this distribution key: 

- 1/3 for staff  

- 1/3 for freelance therapists, trainers, communication experts, advisors, …

- 1/3 for operating resources 

Because we want to put experienced experts at the center of our project, and one of the aims is to honor them in that role and at the same time offer them the opportunity to use what they do in this function, in function of their reintegration, we want to shift the way in which we use resources for them and the amount that we allocate over the coming years from mainly voluntary payments at the start to more paying assignments in the future (in a freelance or employee status according to what is possible and desirable). We see this shift both at the individual level (depending on the trajectory experienced by experts), and at the project and organizational level, with an increasing proportion of the staff resources and / or the resources for reimbursing freelancers going to experienced experts.

We are shifting from a quite local organization to a global focus, from offering services to system change, from doing to inspiring, … We are already surrounded by partners that helped us make this choice and will be continuing to support this transition process, but to be able to make this shift impactfully, we need another strong partner. When we heard and read about the Elevate Prize, we thought this might be the boost we need at this crucial transitional moment. 

The ASPI-Re program will help us to set out the strategy and provide answers in terms of digital transformation and development of digital tools, but we will need a new fundraising strategy for the system change work and to reach our goal to inspire people globally with a new perspective on violence, we will need communication support. For these 2 needs (fundraising and communication) this prize might be our missing link to realize the impact we are aiming at. 

We will need a new fundraising strategy for the system change work and to reach our goal to inspire people globally with a new perspective on violence, we will need communication support. For these 2 needs (fundraising and communication) this prize might be our missing link to realize the impact we are aiming at. 

It would be interesting to cooperate with academic partners or other experts in impact measurement, with an experience in frame change at a global level.