One Man's Journey Through Accountability | Devon Gaster, Men Creating Peace

Devon has dedicated his career to helping men who have been controlling and abusive. Finding himself in the San Francisco County Jail many years ago, facing six months of incarceration and multiple charges, he knew he needed to make a change -- and if he didn’t, he could lose everything. 

And so begins his journey for taking responsibility for the harm he caused and understanding his past behaviors. Ultimately, he found himself wanting to help others take the same steps as a part of his own recovery process. His organization would become a reputable program for helping people become safer and healthier in their relationships. 

But the pandemic, funding challenges, and two failed organizational mergers led them to close their doors as an organization. But the work continues to live on in many ways. 

If you’re inspired by Devon, and found this episode helpful, you can reach out to him at https://mencreatingpeace.org/.

This episode was produced by Jordan Thierry of Dream Chase Media, with essential production and marketing expertise from Aranza Garcia and Issac Gsoria. 

You can follow How to Build a Nonprofit on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Sign up for Jordan’s free newsletter at DreamChaseMedia.com. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Jordan Thierry

Jordan Thierry is a one-of-a-kind dude. He’s been called a master generalist, thought partner, community leader, documentary filmmaker, resource connector, international man of mystery—and that’s just the beginning. Jordan once dreamed of being a big-time filmmaker, but he could never quite pull himself away from activists, teachers, and social workers long enough to make it in Hollywood. Those are his people. And he’s always found more purpose in the movement than the industry. If you’ve worked with Jordan, you know he’s gracious, grounded, curious, and ambitious in that laid-back, West Coast kind of way. He’s also known for asking really good questions. A lot of them. Which is exactly why podcasting is such a natural fit. Too bad it doesn’t pay. So do him a solid—listen to an episode. He thinks he’s pretty good at it. You might agree.

Guest

Devon Gaster

Devon Gaster has dedicated the last 28 years to educating men, teaching violence prevention strategies and advocating to end intimate partner violence. In 2007, he co-founded the Men Creating Peace program in Oakland and was the Executive Director for 17 years. Devon was convicted of battery in 1997 and has been strongly committed to restorative justice and healing since that experience. He is a graduate and certified facilitator of the Manalive™ violence prevention program. Devon worked for 10 years in the San Francisco County Jail’s “Resolve to Stop the Violence Project”. He has facilitated violence prevention groups in San Francisco, Marin, Sacramento, Alameda, and Yolo counties, as well as teaching violence intervention classes at San Quentin State prison. He also worked for more than 6 years with Veterans who struggled with incarceration and homelessness. In 2021, Devon was invited to provide data for the California State Auditor’s independent study of Batterer’s Treatment programs across the state of California. In 2023 he contributed to the California District Attorneys Association Domestic Abuse education film series “Swim Again”. Throughout his career in violence prevention, Devon worked closely with the courts, county probation, state parole and a variety of community-based organizations, with a focus on ending family violence. He has presented at numerous conferences and trainings regarding his work with men who cause harm through domestic abuse. In July of 2024 Men Creating Peace closed their community classes in California. Devon now lives in Olympia, Washington with his wife Alicia. He continues to provide online individual instruction, trainings and presentations on violence prevention and intervention strategies.

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Jordan Thierry (00:27)
I'm your host Jordan Thierry and this is how to build a nonprofit. In this episode, I interviewed Devin Gaster, founder of Men Creating Peace. Devin has dedicated his career to helping men who have been controlling and abusive. Finding himself in a San Francisco County jail many years ago, facing six months of incarceration and multiple charges, he knew he needed to make a change. And if he didn't, he could lose everything.

And so begins his journey for taking responsibility for the harm he caused and understanding his past behaviors. Ultimately, he found himself wanting to help others take the same steps as him as part of his own recovery process. His organization would become a reputable program across the Bay helping people become safer and healthier in their relationships. But the pandemic, funding challenges, two failed organizational mergers led them to close their doors as an organization

in 2024. But the work continues to live on in many ways. All of this and more in today's episode, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Jordan Thierry (01:28)
All right, we're live. Devon, can you hear me? All right, I can hear you too. You sound great. It's so excited to talk with you today and to interview you for the podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to be You know, before we kind of jump into your organizational history, I would love to just learn a little bit more about like yourself and your own backstory some of the things that of your organization.

Devon Gaster (01:30)
I can, thank you.

Jordan Thierry (01:53)
you just tell me a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?

Devon Gaster (01:57)
Thanks, Jordan. I appreciate you having me on here and I'm really excited that you're doing these podcasts. So I grew up in South Florida. I was born in Sarasota on the West Coast and then grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida. to school there and then left and started my travels. Went to Colorado first and then New Orleans and then ended up in California after college.

for the first part of my career, I was a florist. I was a floral designer in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, in Hawaii. And then I moved back to San Francisco and started my own flower business. And that's where it all began.

I had to do this program called Man Alive.

And it was a 52 week batters intervention program. And the program really changed my life. I had a major eye opening experience and understanding that, you know, I had serious problems with my anger and my abusive behaviors and had for many, many years of my life, I was in major that led me to go into the work that I started to do.

Jordan Thierry (02:35)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

thank you for sharing that. And of course, the reason that we have you on is because we know the powerful work done under your organization and the own transformation that you've made. But I kind of want to go back a little bit to talk about maybe some of the early of your own growing up.

that you feel like contributed to point where you were violent against someone that you cared for, maybe some of what you believe like are social factors that also kind of contributed to that.

Devon Gaster (03:29)
Interesting. Okay. So I grew up in a very conservative Catholic Republican Party family unit. ⁓ Very conservative. I was in Boy Scouts. I was an altar boy. I had a lot of I played baseball. And in high school, I ran track and cross country.

But I think a lot of the things that contributed were what I learned about manhood and how that patriarchal kind of upbringing of where the traditional man role and the traditional woman role was sort of influenced to my belief system, right? We call it the male role belief system in the program that I teach. And it talks about, you know, the male role belief system is really where you learn to be a man.

the values and the ideals and the standards that you grew up believing in. And part of that was this gender role where the woman had a certain role, the man had a certain role, and the man's role was always being in charge and calling the shots and being in that more dominant position. of my parents were extremely strict and very controlling, especially my mom.

and they also were pretty heavy-handed with regards to punishment, know, and physical punishment. So my sisters didn't get it as bad as I did. I was the only boy in the family. But, ⁓ you know, I was rambunctious. was against authority. I didn't like being controlled and told what to do. So I got in trouble a lot. I wasn't a bad kid, but I wasn't the best kid either.

And I didn't do so great in school. got, I was C's and B's. Like I said, I played sports, but I got into using marijuana at a really early age as a way to numb and kind of a way to distract the controlling behavior of my parents. then they went through their own divorce and it was ugly. It was very ugly and drawn out and,

And that I think also had a pretty big influence on my drug use because I just checked out. I didn't want to be around it. I stayed gone a lot. And then eventually my mother kicked me out of the house when I was 16 and I went to live with my dad. And at that point in time, I pretty much had to be on my own. My dad was away a lot, traveled a lot, was a stockbroker and was doing his job quite a bit. And I pretty much had to raise myself for those last two years.

which helped me, you know, became very independent. But I also was of the belief system or had this kind of idea that men could pretty much do what they wanted, especially white men, a privilege growing up in the South. There was, you know, pretty much the idea that I was privileged. I had this sort of entitlement that I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, as long as worked hard and paid for it.

Jordan Thierry (05:54)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (06:06)
obeyed the rules and laws of the land, things like that. that's a big part of it. I guess witnessing and watching the dynamic of my parents that marriage fell apart, not wanting to repeat some of the things that I witnessed in my parents' marriage, but ultimately I did repeat those same behaviors.

you know, yelling at my partner, my parents yelled at each other a lot. My dad was unfaithful to my mom, I was unfaithful to my wife, which led to some of the major problems in our relationship. There was a lot of secretiveness and things that lies by omission, not telling the truth about certain things or leaving certain parts of things out. I did witness that in my family of origin. But,

Jordan Thierry (06:26)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (06:49)
Yeah, think growing up in the South in a conservative family really did, in a very religious family, of shaped some of my beliefs and the ways that I brought into my first relationship.

Jordan Thierry (06:50)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and what I'm hearing too is that you kind of learn to try to control people through violence as your parents did with you sometimes, right?

Devon Gaster (07:10)
Certainly, and not so much physical violence. It was verbal and emotional, financial. That was the type of abusive behavior that I engaged in. A lot of verbal, a lot of emotional, financial, and then by cheating on my partner with sexual abuse. So, yeah, I think I brought all that into my relationship, thinking that, hey, this was just the way things go. This is what's normal.

with relationships.

Jordan Thierry (07:35)
And on the surface

at this time period, it sounds like you were on the road a bit and had interesting places far away from Florida. On the surface was your life sort of like a happy painted picture in terms of successful business and family and everything like

The back end of that was not so pretty.

Devon Gaster (07:57)
Sort of. Yeah, on the outside we look like the perfect family. You know, we had a daughter that I was very involved in her life. involved in our church. I changed from being a Catholic to being an Episcopal.

You know, we had the business, my my wife at the time was working as a professor at the University of San Francisco. We were trying to buy our first home. You know, we were struggling a little bit, but things were really starting to do better. But there was a lot of tension between us, miscommunication, things, you know, we just couldn't work to compromise.

But she and I have, know, we worked it out. We were able to co-parent, even though we separated and divorced. We have a wonderful daughter that we raised. We're still in communication to this day. We're in a much better place today. But back then, yeah, it looked like a really perfect family on the outside, but on the inside,

There were a lot of problems.

Jordan Thierry (08:52)
Thank you for sharing important backstory and adding some color and texture to sort of what you brought into the founding of your organization. Can you talk a little bit about, yeah, your you know, when you started to change and how you started to learn the things that would be so important you going into starting Men Creating Peace.

Devon Gaster (09:13)
Well, think the beginning of my change happened when I was sitting in a jail cell with five other inmates in the San Francisco County Jail, realizing that I had really messed up and not really understanding how the criminal justice system worked and how deep into it I was. I was charged with three felonies and looking at going to jail for a minimum of six months.

That was the aha, kind of wake up, get your shit together, you better make some changes in your life moment. And so after my first court appearance, I was luckily able to join this program called Man Alive. I was referred to it by the court officer at the time. And when I first got to that first class, I was very resistant. I was in a lot of denial. I was in a lot of blame.

was her fault, she started the fight, she wanted this, she set me up, all the things that a lot of other men that have, you know, abusive tendencies bring to the table. Those are some of the same stories I told in the beginning. And was kind of very resistant to taking accountability for my part. It was only probably eight or 10 weeks into the program where I realized that, I was not

so dissimilar to the men in the program. In fact, I had a lot of things in common with them. And I was hearing their stories. And the way it was set up is that we sat in a semicircle and the facilitator was in the front. And the men that had been in the program a little longer were teaching the material to the new men. So I was a new So hearing their stories, hearing their check-ins, hearing the work and witnessing the work that was being done in the class.

really started to open my eyes to my behaviors and things that I had been doing all my life or most of my life, certainly my adult life and in all my relationships from when I was in high school to present day. I started to realize that these were unhealthy behaviors and certainly had a tremendous negative impact, not only on myself, but on the people that I was in relationship with.

That included my family, included friends, co-workers, my child. So many different people in my life were being impacted negatively by my anger and my that I didn't realize were violent. I didn't realize were so abusive until I was hearing these same stories in the classroom and getting called on my Also, that was a wonderful thing about the Man Alive program. It was a pure education program where the men in the program

were able to hold each other accountable through a process of check-in and feedback, where the men were able to give you feedback, but it didn't come from a punitive place. came from a nurturing and supportive place. And so that's where I started to really realize that I needed to change or I was going to repeat the same behavior in my next relationship. I couldn't save this relationship. It was over. You know, we were going to get a divorce.

Jordan Thierry (11:47)
Right, right.

Devon Gaster (12:01)
But someday I would be able to go into another relationship, but I didn't want to make the same mistakes. And I certainly didn't want to continue to impact negatively my ex-partner or my child at that time. I wanted to be a different person. I wanted to change my life. I didn't want to continue on that road of anger and violence and abusive behaviors.

Jordan Thierry (12:14)
Mm-hmm.

did you, it took you 52 weeks to complete the program. That's a typical time in California. What happened after you kind of finished your participation as a student in the Man Alive program?

Devon Gaster (12:36)
So at the very end of the program, the director of the program, Hamish Sinclair, who started Man Alive back in early 80s at the Marin Abused Women's Services in Marin County, he came in witness to one of the classes. I was maybe three or four weeks from completing the program and he sat in one of the classes and at the break he actually pulled me aside and talked to me and said, you you've seen we've gotten a lot out of the program.

I can see by the way you're delivering the material that you're able to connect with the other men in the program and they're listening to you and they're able to hear the message that you're sharing. He's like, how would you like to continue to do this work? And I said, no, I'm done. I'm gonna finish this program. I'm gonna finish my probation and get off my paperwork and get on with my life. I have a successful flower business here in San Francisco.

going through a really ugly divorce and custody battle. But I don't want to do this. You know, this work is not for So a few weeks later, got a call from Hamish and he said, you know, we have a small grant to do some public outreach and we're looking for a graduate from the program that would be willing to start to do some community based outreach in San Francisco to schools.

community-based organizations, social clubs, things like that, to talk about batterer's treatment as a participant and now a then also there was ⁓ a victim of domestic violence and a victim of sexual trafficking. We all three were on a panel and we would make these presentations and each one of us would tell our story and then open it up to the audience for questions and answers. And he said, there's a little bit of money involved, it's not much,

Jordan Thierry (13:54)
Mm.

Devon Gaster (14:20)
are about 10 or 15 of these presentations.

So I was invited to do these presentations. At first, I was really reluctant because I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself. But as I did them, each time it got a little easier to tell my story and to hear from people in the audience that would come up to me after the presentation and say, Hey, thank you very much for sharing your story. I know someone that could really benefit from this.

It was really about promoting batterer's treatment programs. And it was very early on in what was going on in the state of California with regards men who had committed domestic violence to participate in these anger management and violence prevention batterer's treatment programs. So that was sort of part It was 1997, 1998, I started doing it.

Jordan Thierry (14:58)
Around what year was that?

Okay.

Devon Gaster (15:06)
And that was over with, I had started going back to the groups. One of the things with Man Alive, and one of the things that we also had in Men Creating Peace, was the ability for alumni, people that had graduated from the program, to come back for free and get support. Sit in the class, get support from the other men in the program. so I started doing that. I was missing the classes. I was missing the other men's support. There was a couple of guys that I become friends with. I wanted to see them graduate, that kind of thing.

And what I found was I really enjoyed sharing my knowledge that I was gaining. I started to reconsider the offer that Hamish had given me to become a facilitator. So I started to train to become a facilitator. Took about a year. it was...

just one night a week for a while. That's all it was. And also a day of training. we'd have an afternoon training and then one night of the week I would go to the class. And eventually I became a certified facilitator, went through all the trainings and then I started to actually teach class or facilitate classes at Man Alive. That went on for a couple of years.

Jordan Thierry (16:08)
Can I ask what?

Can I ask what motivated you to, I guess finally go from, I wanna be to engage the other students that were in my class and contribute to help to like, I actually wanna be a batterer intervention program facilitator. And I wanna go through certification process and do this as a part of my work.

Devon Gaster (16:34)
no, it was was a recovery. part of my recovery really. And it was, it was like an know, ⁓ and going to meetings, you know, if you, the meetings you would go to, in a recovery program continued to help you stay focused on stopping your violence or, or me, I should use the I statements. It kept me focused on stopping my violence. I was going through a very contentious divorce and, having a lot of problems with my ex-wife and her attorney and it was ugly.

and all at the same time, still engaged in the program, still getting support for not going back to violent behaviors, but using the tools I had learned in the program to be more intimate, more understanding, more compassionate for what my partner, my ex-partner was going through with the divorce, and then also learning how to be a different person. I was still early on in my recovery, so it helped me to stay focused on those principles that I was learning.

But it was the invitation of Mr. Sinclair, again, saying, hey, we want you to be part of this team. looking for new facilitators. We've got this special training program through the San Francisco Sheriff's gonna be training some guys who've come out of our Resolve to Stop the Violence program, which was a jail violent offenders in the San Francisco County Jail. So there was a couple of men that were coming out of that program, and me, and one other guy from the community.

And that's how it started, was that we worked together to train to become a facilitator. was like a core group of us, four of us, that actually finished and completed the training and started to become facilitators the Man Alive program. And that's really how it started. I didn't like doing public speaking. I didn't think I had a knack for it. But after a while, I realized that what I was sharing actually had value.

people were coming up to me and saying that they were getting something out of what I was sharing with them and that they appreciated me being honest and telling my story. And it was important to hear from someone who was in their recovery period and who was willing to change and take accountability for the violence that I had committed. And so I realized that, hey, I couldn't save my marriage or my relationship, but maybe I could help another man save his, or maybe I could

you know, another man's violence by sharing what I had learned in the program. And so that gave me the motivation. Those are a lot of the factors that gave me the motivation. I felt like, hey, maybe I could give back and help someone else. And it did. And it proved true. Many, many men have told me over the years how much it meant to them that I had also been where they were. I had gone through the program. I had graduated. I had gone through some of the trials.

and tribulations they had gone through. And they could relate to me on a different way than say a facilitator that maybe had never gone through a program like that or who was maybe from a clinical background or a therapeutic background that had not really had that lived experience that the men that were going through the program have. And I've heard that many, many times over the years.

Jordan Thierry (19:26)
thank you for sharing that super helpful. how did how did so eventually you went from facilitating in the man live program to starting your own organization in creating a batterer intervention programs under that. Can you tell us about like that transition and why that occurred?

Devon Gaster (19:44)
Yeah, sure. you for asking. So after I became a facilitator at Man Alive, it was not too much longer after that I lost my business. I lost my flower business in the divorce. I had to close it. It was ordered by the judge to close it, dissolve it. So I had to do something else to make a living. And I'd already been a facilitator and working part time and I started to get jobs in the Marin Abuse Women's Services program where Man Alive started. I started commuting over there two days a week.

and working. was going up to Sacramento where there was another man alive, Sacramento, and working in the jails and working in the community up there. So I was kind of bouncing around the Bay Area for a couple of years, trying to make a living, trying to figure out how I was going to move forward. And then finally, I got a job in the RSVP program in the San Francisco County Jail through a program called Community Works. They were nonprofit in Oakland and Berkeley, actually. They hired me full time and I started working in the jail.

as a case manager and a facilitator in the actual jail setting in the RSCP Resolve to Stop the Violence Project through the San Francisco Sheriff's Department. And that really gave me the confidence to do more. one of the men that I worked with in the Marin program had lived in Alameda County or was living in Alameda County and became friends with me after he graduated. And he said, you know, there's nothing like this in Alameda County. Why don't we start a program like Man Alive in Alameda County?

And so I went to Hamish and I talked to him about it and he gave me his blessing. said, that'd be great. You can use our curriculum. I'll support you and give you a letter of recommendation, things like that. I mean, Alameda County was not willing to start the program. They weren't willing to let us start the program. There was a lot of resistance. had 13 programs already, batterers treatment programs already in Alameda County. It's a big county. It's the second largest county in the state, area-wise. And they said they didn't need another program. So we

Jordan Thierry (21:17)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Devon Gaster (21:30)
I joined with my friend Tom Seeple, I joined the Alameda County Domestic Violence Collaborative and we started attending meetings in 2005. And then in 2006 we kept getting more more encouragement from the collaborative to start our program. They really liked what we had to offer. was a unique type of approach to treating men that had caused harm. Very unique.

No other programs were like it and that they knew of in Alameda County. So we got a to us by Laney College they supported us with a free classroom for six months. And the collaborative supported us by giving us our first couple of recommendations, first couple of clients, they referred to that's how it started. We started with no clients and then we had two, one, two, then it went off for there.

You know, we started to get a reputation. started to other people that I worked for in Marin and Sacramento and San Francisco were referring clients to us that had moved Alameda County. So they knew that I was teaching the man alive curriculum in our men creating peace program. and that they kind of felt that they were going to get a good, a good, ⁓ education. Finally, about two years later, probation certified us as a program. So it took, it took two years.

Jordan Thierry (22:36)
Mm-hmm. Devon.

Devon Gaster (22:43)
to get Alameda County to certify us, maybe even three years. I think it was 2009 that we finally got our certification. And then we started getting referrals from the courts, from family court, from criminal court, from probation, parole, and other agencies within Alameda County. And that's when it really took off.

Jordan Thierry (23:01)
Devin, you tell us, you talked about how it was a very unique program and unlike many other batterer intervention programs, can you just kind of describe for those of us who may not be familiar with batterer intervention programs and how they usually work, what made the Men Creating Peace Program approach unique and so compelling for many folks?

Devon Gaster (23:23)
That's a good question. I appreciate you asking that. I the main thing that made the Man Alive or I program, which was the curriculum that Men Creating Peace took to start our program, and then we added to it, we've added to it and changed it in some ways, was the peer education approach, where the men got involved in the teaching process. So the facilitator was sort of like an orchestra So we would work with the men that had been in the program longer and say, hey, Bob,

Why don't you share with Jim, you know, some of the things that you're learning male role belief system or about your recovery from your behavior, your abusive behavior. Or let's talk about this subject about male entitlement or let's talk about the patriarchy or the toxic masculinity let's talk about some of the behaviors that keep you locked into the cycle like denial and blame and minimizing and collusion.

So the men would actually be empowered to teach the other men. then as the men worked around the circle, each week they would change chairs. They would advance to the next chair, the next chair, then once they finished first stage they would move on to second stage. There were three stages in the program. So that was another unique thing about it, was each time they would advance to another stage it was like a graduation. They had to go through a process of doing an exercise in front of the men.

asking questions about what they had learned in that stage. So they had to demonstrate to the other men in the program that they had a knowledge and they had internalized the information in that stage and that they were accountable for what they had done to bring them to the program before they could advance to the next stage. And so that was really one of the unique things about it that I found. then we just brought in different teaching modalities. We talked about jealousy.

Jordan Thierry (24:45)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (25:09)
We talked about substance abuse and how prevalent that was. It was prevalent in the majority of the men. I think at least 70 % of the men that went through the program also struggled at one time with substance abuse issues. I struggled with substance abuse issues in my earlier days. So I could relate to that. And so I thought it was really important to bring it in, not as a cause, right? We couldn't use that as a blame or an excuse our violent behavior.

Jordan Thierry (25:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Devon Gaster (25:36)
but it was a contributing factor. And so a lot of times we would actually ask our participants to get help for their substance abuse before they went through the program or before they would continue with the program. And we had to get the judge or we had to get the district attorney or the probation officer kind of involved in that process of saying, hey, Joe So-and-so is really struggling. He came to class for the second time under the influence. We had to ask him to leave.

I think he could really benefit for into a 90 day program or a 60 day program. And we're gonna ask that he not continue with our program until he gets some So that was a big part of creating that chapter on substance abuse. Another issue that came up that we decided was an important factor was parenting. Many of the men that went through the program, including myself, were parents. And we were bringing the same dysfunctional

Jordan Thierry (26:11)
Mmm.

Devon Gaster (26:27)
parenting skills that we had learned in our family of origin into our present day parenting. So how could we help the men that were parents learn better parenting skills? of them had to go to parenting classes, or in addition to those parenting classes, what we provided was a whole chapter on unhealthy parenting styles and healthy parenting styles. So it was a two-part chapter.

Jordan Thierry (26:29)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (26:51)
the men really benefited from it. I think that they really enjoyed hearing it and talking about it and the group discussions that it led to. One of the other things that we introduced that was very unique was this survivor impact. No other program that I knew of had survivor impact. We were doing it in the San Francisco County Jail. We were doing it in the San Quentin program. But no other programs were doing it where we would actually invite survivors. Nobody that had been in the program but a survivor.

of either domestic violence or substance abuse or maybe they had been sexually trafficked or maybe they had been abused as a child or maybe it was a family member of someone who had killed a situation like gun violence or gang violence or robbery or some other thing. Well, they were a survivor of a violent crime. They would come and tell their story to the men in the second and third stage of the program where there was more buy-in.

Jordan Thierry (27:45)
Hmm.

Devon Gaster (27:45)
there

was less resistance once it got to second and third stage. And we did it twice a year and it was one of the most impactful and thought-provoking parts of the to actually be able to have questions and answers and to start to build compassion and empathy for what a survivor went through.

Jordan Thierry (27:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Well, it sounds very impactful, meaningful and deep. And so, yeah, thank you for your as you know, I've had an opportunity to meet ⁓ some of the men that have gone through your program and testimonies echo and double down on kind of impact and transformation that I'm hearing about from you.

So going back to the organizational journey, you said around 2008, 2009, after you finally got certified by Alameda County to be one of the official batterer intervention programs in the county, you start getting referrals, right? From the courts, from probation, from the family courts. know, at that point you're getting busy and it sounds like your program is starting to have

a good number of participants. How organizationally, do you, how are you funding yourself? Is it only through like the fees that the participants themselves or is there other revenue coming in to help support the organization?

Devon Gaster (29:05)
So at first it was, my partner Tom and I started with a $200 investment. put in $200 of my money, he put in $200 of his money. We got a post office box, we got a bank we got some stationery, we got up and running. And then about a year and a half, maybe two years into it, Tom and I separated. He wasn't able to devote the time and effort into the work. I was hoping that he would train to become a facilitator and he wasn't doing that.

So he had a whole bunch of other stuff going on in his life. We parted ways and I started to run the program by myself. And it was hard at first. I was working a full-time job in the jails and doing the program and just trying to keep it going. I wasn't taking any money out for myself or if I did it would be maybe $100 here or $100 there. But all the money was going back into the program. We weren't a nonprofit at that point in time. We were a for-profit.

And then one of the folks at the collaborative suggested we apply for our nonprofit status and we did. And it took us a little while to get that nonprofit status. So then we were able to ask for donations. But primarily, even throughout the entire 17 years of being in business, it was primarily through the fees that the men paid to be in the program. So we offered two scholarships a year for men that couldn't afford the fees, or maybe it was a temporary scholarship until they got

Jordan Thierry (29:58)
Mmm.

Devon Gaster (30:24)
employment and they were able to pay their fees and then that scholarship would go over to someone else that needed it But mostly it was from the fees that the men paid. And then we started to get donations. I remember our first donation came in about 2010, a friend of a friend who gave us $500. And that was huge. I that was just like, oh my God, we can pay rent for...

Jordan Thierry (30:44)
Yeah.

Devon Gaster (30:46)
X amount of months. Because college gave us rent free for six months. But then after that, we had to pay for the classroom space. And then as we grew, we had to pay rent at other classrooms. We had at one point in time, we had four classrooms, and we had three different locations in the Bay Area and Alameda County. We had one in Berkeley at the Options Recovery Center. We had one at ⁓ in San Leandro at the Deaf Community Center. And then we had two classes going on

Jordan Thierry (30:47)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Wow.

Devon Gaster (31:14)
⁓ at Delaney College. So each one of those places required us to hold insurance, pay rent. We also started to hire facilitators and an admin person. And so all those things cost money. And so after I paid then if there was anything left over, I would pay a little bit towards myself. So it was years before I actually started to take a salary.

Then we started to have our fundraisers. Once we got our non-profit status, we got a board together and we started to have small fundraisers. Then we started working with the Oakland A's and we started to collaborate with the Oakland A's. Each year had ⁓ what's known as Tacos for Peace. We would hire a taco truck to come and they would set up their whole thing and we would sell tickets with the Oakland A's.

They would come, they could eat all the tacos they wanted. We also had games to do and prizes and raffles. And then a couple of speakers, we'd invite some of our graduates to come and speak and maybe some of our board members would speak. And then everybody would go in and watch the baseball game. And the Oakland A's promoted it for us and we got our name up on the big screen and they gave us a reduced rate on our tickets because we bought a block of tickets.

Jordan Thierry (32:11)
Wow.

Yeah, super cool.

Devon Gaster (32:28)
Those were very successful, those fundraisers that we did for the Oakland A's. And again, we started to get a little traction and we started to grow. then the pandemic hit. And then everything closed. For two months we closed, we paid our employees. that point I was drawing a salary. So everybody got salary while we were closed down.

Jordan Thierry (32:36)
Hmm

Devon Gaster (32:47)
And then finally, after two months, probation allowed us to start back on a Zoom platform. And that's when we started doing classes again on Zoom. Not all of our participants came back, but the majority of them did. And sadly, we didn't go back to holding our groups in the same places. weren't able to go back to San Leandro. They decided they weren't going to allow us to hold groups there anymore. The options recovery services went through a whole transition of

Jordan Thierry (32:52)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (33:13)
leadership and they decided they didn't want to hold classes there any Laney College, did away with the classroom spaces that we were using modules. They tore those down and they changed their whole approach. So the places that we had been holding our classes were no longer available to And for about two years, we just did Zoom. And our numbers maintained about the same. There's a little bit of a dip at first, but we were able to maintain our numbers. But one of the other things that happened

Jordan Thierry (33:24)
Cheers.

Devon Gaster (33:40)
was that several of the programs, the batteries treatment programs in Alameda County went out of business. They couldn't survive the pandemic. So that helped us because those clients started coming to us. And at that point in time, we had developed a pretty good reputation throughout the Bay Area. So we had probation departments from the Bay Area counties, from Marin, from Sonoma, from San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Francisco County, sending us clients, Sacramento County.

Jordan Thierry (33:46)
Hmm. Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (34:07)
because I had made connections in all those counties with the work that I had done. And so we started getting referrals from other counties and working and having relationships with those probation departments, those court systems. And so we were still getting quite a few referrals. And because we were one of the few programs that survived in Alameda County, our numbers started to increase. at one point, I think we had about 60 people in the program.

Jordan Thierry (34:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Well.

Devon Gaster (34:32)
The other

thing we were doing is we were teaching, before the pandemic, were teaching in San Quentin, one class in the H unit, in the honor unit, twice a month. We do an hour and a half class in that unit, and we were getting paid for that. And we also had a contract with the San Francisco County Jail. We were doing some work in their reentry program. So they had a dormitory with guys that were very close to getting out of incarceration. They only had a few months left.

And we did an anger management class using our curriculum in that dorm setting. So we did that for about two years prior. This was prior to the pandemic. So those are some of the things that increased our size and increased our program. Our board members, we had a lot of different board members from different walks of life that all contributed, all brought, you know, what they knew and who they knew to the program. Those people became donors.

Jordan Thierry (35:24)
Okay.

Devon Gaster (35:25)
More more people heard about us. My church that I belonged to in San Leandro was also very generous and the people that were there and found out about what we were doing. They came to our events. They donated each year to our fundraisers. We had a yearly fundraiser in the fall and then we also had one at the end of the year. So we had two fundraisers a year. And the one around Christmas time or at the end of the year was just a mailing.

You know, it was an end of the year, mail out. And then also we were able to get some funding through organizations like the one you worked for and got some grants. of the other things that happened that was so wonderful was we got a small grant during the pandemic from the department of, Oakland's Department of Violence Prevention, where we would do some outreach. So we did eight outreach.

Jordan Thierry (35:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Right.

Devon Gaster (36:13)
presentations to hospitals, to law offices, to other organizations, social organizations, community-based organizations, schools. Laney College was one of the ones we did a presentation to, the faculty and students about domestic violence and about awareness, domestic violence awareness and what they could do to get involved in interrupting the cycle and resources that were available to them in Alameda County.

So that was a grant that helped us a lot during get through the pandemic. And then also after the pandemic, we did another grant with the department of Oakland Department of Violence Prevention, where we partnered with Covenant House to create a program for the transitional age youth. So the young men, 16 to 25, that were at Covenant House, we started a group for them, a support group for them. And we brought in the curriculum, some of the curriculum and brought in other teaching modalities.

to appeal to that age group. And that for two and a half years was very successful. We started with five men and it grew. At the end we had 14 men coming a week to the program. And that was really successful and because it gave this particular segment of our population a voice. It gave them an opportunity to come to something that they weren't mandated to. It wasn't through the criminal justice system. They weren't forced to be there. They came voluntarily.

Jordan Thierry (37:16)
Wow.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (37:34)
and they felt supported, they talked about subjects that they wouldn't normally talk about any other place. cried, they laughed, they shared things with each other that they wouldn't share anywhere else. They felt safe to come. We held that container. we had speakers come, you know, and we had survivor impact speakers come. We had speakers from the community come. We did a panel of women come and talk about, you know, issues that the questions that these young men had about women and relationships and

all kinds of different things, which was just hugely positive and for them. We had to close that. When we closed the program, we did close that down, unfortunately.

Jordan Thierry (38:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

yeah, so I mean, it sounds like you had some really incredible growth over that course of 2010 to 2020 before the pandemic happened and some really smart strategic partnerships, really innovative fundraising ideas. I'm learning a lot this is a super insightful.

tactics that you're sharing. But yeah, you ultimately close the program. And so I'm wondering, you know, was it a personal choice or was it because of the challenges or some of the other challenges related to, you know, the organizational structure?

Devon Gaster (38:51)
I think the reason that we decided to ultimately close were a number of factors. One, we were growing and we couldn't grow anymore. We didn't have enough sustainable to expand the business like we wanted to expand the business. We did go back to holding classes in one place in the Fruitville neighborhood, right at the BART station, near the BART station. And we were partnered with a larger organization

at that particular time. And they would look like we were going to maybe merge with that organization. And they gave us classroom space to hold two classrooms, two classes a week, one on Wednesday night and one on Thursday nights. It was close to a BART station. It was really easy accessible by bus or BART. And it was working out great. We thought it was a good pairing. They were already established. They were a much bigger organization.

in Alameda County, they were doing a lot of the same work, but they didn't have a component, an anger management or violence prevention component. So they wanted to bring that into their menu that they offered. And then some things happened with the director and it was some stuff in his personal life. they had just prior to us starting to negotiate with them, they had taken on another smaller nonprofit under their wing. And that became, I think, a bigger

challenged than they had anticipated. And so when time came to actually move forward with our merger, they decided not to go through with it. And so that was really tough and a real knockdown to us because we had really hoped for that merger to happen with a larger organization. We could have continued to and we could have definitely expanded to other parts of Alameda County. So that didn't happen and that was 2022.

when that happened,

the spring of 2022. And that negotiation went on until early part of 2023. I think in January of 2023 is when they actually said, we're not going to do this. So then we found another organization that was located in Jackson's, Jack London Square. And they were doing a lot of work with folks coming out of the criminal justice system.

Jordan Thierry (40:50)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (40:54)
So they were helping with housing, job training, case management, things like that. But also they didn't, and they had substance abuse classes, but they didn't have an anger management component. So we started to work with them. And all through 2023, we started to negotiate with them. And in the very kind of middle of 2023, May of 2023, my wife and I bought a home in Washington state. She wanted to move back up here. She had spent a lot of her life.

She had gone to college up here in Olympia. She knew a lot of people. We couldn't afford a house in the Bay Area. We got a lot bigger house up here in Washington. And we already had a community of friends. So that was a big impetus for us of changing. So when she moved up here in July, the late July, August of 2023, I remained down in the Bay Area running Men Creating Peace and trying to merge with this other organization.

Jordan Thierry (41:23)
Mm-hmm

Devon Gaster (41:49)
And so I actually had an office at their offices. We had probation come and see their offices and give us the blessing that this would be a good place for us to hold classes. Everything was looking really good for that merger. We had a contract kind of in the works and I was going to continue to work as a consultant and trainer for another couple of years. So it would have carried me through into 2025. And then what the

Jordan Thierry (41:56)
Okay.

Sure.

Devon Gaster (42:13)
The organization, I'm not going to give the name, but the organization was owned by an Israeli organization which manufactured the ankle monitors that folks, when they get out of in custody or when they have a DUI, they manufactured those ankle monitors. And it was an Israeli based company that owned this other company. It was a for-profit, we were a nonprofit. So that was also kind of a bit of a difficulty.

Jordan Thierry (42:24)
Mmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ⁓

Yeah.

Devon Gaster (42:40)
Merging with the nonprofit before would have been a much easier transition. But it was a little bit difficult. We worked with our attorney on that. We had something in place where we thought would all work out. But then that situation happened in Israel in the October of 2023. And they went silent. They went radio We were really near the end of signing the deal. And it looked like it was going to happen.

Jordan Thierry (42:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (43:04)
that negotiation stalled in December of 2023. They basically said, we're not going to do this. was the second time. And so I went back to my board. We met in December, late December, before the holidays, and the board decided that the best thing to do was to close the organization.

And so I met with probation and said, our probation certification, we would get recertified each year and our year ended in July. So I asked probation, I said, can we keep going until July of 2024 so that we can graduate as many of our participants who are involved? I don't want to leave these guys hanging. We had about 50 guys in the program at that point and I just didn't want to leave them hanging. Plus we also had this program going with Covenant House that was wildly successful and we didn't want to lose that either.

Jordan Thierry (43:42)
⁓ wow.

Right.

Devon Gaster (43:53)
So I asked them if they would be willing to do that. They were. And so we stopped taking new clients in December of 2023. And then the first part, first half of 2024, we graduated as many as we could. Well, I continued to go back and forth between Washington and Oakland. I rented a room in a friend's house. We rented office space and we held it together. And then in July when our certification ran out.

We had six people or seven people left in the program and we referred them to other programs to finish their complete their program and we closed the doors.

Jordan Thierry (44:27)
Well, it sounds like you made a really great decision there to keep the program going as much as, as long as you could to allow the people in your program, as many of them as possible to finish, right? While your credential was still good. So now we're sort of, what, about two years since you wrapped up? Oh, one year. It's been only been one year. Okay.

Devon Gaster (44:45)
Exactly a year actually. exactly. Yeah. 20.

here. And this year, in the early part of this year 2025,

I opened Men Creating Peace, Counseling and Education, LLC here because the board gave me the intellectual property rights, the material, the name, the website was all given to me by the board members. They voted on that. And so I was able to utilize that to create a new program up here. It's not a nonprofit. It's a for-profit LLC. But at least the work is continuing. And now I'm seeing individual clients

on a one-to-one weekly basis using the same curriculum. I'm doing presentations and public speaking events and my hope is that I'll be able to also expand this to other batterer's treatment programs up here in Washington and maybe throughout the country that want to use some of our curriculum or some of our model and enhance their program by utilizing some of the unique qualities of our program.

Jordan Thierry (45:45)
it's been about a year and from everything I'm hearing and from what I know about you and the work that you're doing, like, you you did so many things right. And you really busted your ass for the organization to keep it going. Looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently or no?

Devon Gaster (46:04)
Hmm.

Good question. Would I have done anything differently?

I think I would have applied for more grants. I think I would have had a larger board. A larger board. We really kept our board small. There was only four to six members. At one point I think we had seven members. But I think if we had a larger board, a more diversified, maybe board members from the corporate sector and things like that, and folks that maybe on our board that were familiar with grant writing, that would have helped a lot.

because I didn't know anything about grant writing. I've only written a couple of grants. But one of things we did find also was that there wasn't many organizations willing to fund batterer's treatment programs in this field. They were willing to fund victims' and survivor programs and children's and family programs, but not so much on the batterer's treatment program side. So there was a challenge with that.

⁓ The other thing I think I would have moved out of my home office and gotten a bigger space if we had been able to get a little more funding and been a place where we could hold the classes at the office. So an office space where we could hold classes at the same location because I think that also took a lot of our income was having to pay rent in three different locations.

Jordan Thierry (47:07)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (47:16)
Those are some of the big ones, I think. And maybe hiring an admin person or an assistant director that could help me, because I was trying to wear all these different hats and it really burned me out. I was also facilitating, I was monitoring a whole bunch of different things. I was writing all the reports for probation, parole, the courts. And if I'd had an assistant director or someone that could have taken on more of that role,

Jordan Thierry (47:18)
Mm-hmm.

Right, because you were also facilitating the programs too,

Devon Gaster (47:43)
of the administrative part of it. did have an administrative assistant in the tail end of the last few years of working, but for the majority of the time I couldn't afford it. So those are the big things I think would have changed or maybe even changed the directory of the program. I wish we could have merged with that larger nonprofit in the very beginning of our negotiation process. think

that would have continued to keep the Man Alive program or the men creating peace program going in Alameda County and in California. But, you know, I also believe that everything happens for a reason and God has a plan and, you know, the plan was for me to move up here and to start something new. And I'm already making inroads with the Washington Domestic Violence Association or collaboration.

Jordan Thierry (48:19)
Yeah. Right. Right.

Devon Gaster (48:32)
That's up here. I'm already starting to meet with those folks so I'm still doing the work, but I'm doing doing in a different way a little different approach

Jordan Thierry (48:39)
The work continues.

Devon Gaster (48:43)
I'm not doing groups anymore. And right now I'm not doing anything that has to do with folks in the criminal justice system. I'm still getting a lot of referrals. I'm still getting lot of phone calls from attorneys and from people that know my program and that have worked with me over the years. But unfortunately, because I'm not a certified program in Alameda County any longer, because I'm not a resident of South Alameda County any longer, and our offices are not located there anymore.

Jordan Thierry (48:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Devon Gaster (49:08)
We can't take anybody coming out of the court system. I wish we could, but right now we're not allowed to do that.

Jordan Thierry (49:14)
your LLC, you're offering consulting services and things of that nature to help other programs. that okay? Okay.

Devon Gaster (49:21)
Absolutely. Yeah. So I hope to

work maybe as a consultant or to help develop programs here in Washington and other places in the country. I've been hired to do some public speaking events. I just finished a series of presentations, three different presentations to the New Jersey judicial folks where I spoke to the staff members that work for the different courts in New Jersey. And I hope to continue with that.

and making more more connections in that realm. And just continuing to work and continuing to get out there. I've got a pilot project that I'm working on with the Oakland Unified School District. We were hoping to do a young men's program in one of the schools, a pilot project to again do something similar to what we did with Covenant House but to a younger population to help these young men to learn about these things. Healthy communication, healthy relationship skills.

Jordan Thierry (50:12)
Yeah.

Devon Gaster (50:14)
you know, what not to do, you know, bringing in some of the teaching modalities that we've used and utilized and seen success with at a younger age to maybe help them to avoid going into the street life or, you know, going into pimping women or selling drugs or some of the other things that young men fall into in that early adolescence and early teen years.

Jordan Thierry (50:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Devon Gaster (50:40)
So that's a hope, that's a hope. We're still in the process of negotiating that. It would be a small pilot project, but if that worked and we were able get some good numbers, maybe that could expand to other schools in Oakland Unified. So these are some of the things we're looking at and maybe working up here in Washington doing the same thing.

Jordan Thierry (50:57)
Wow, that sounds really cool. Keep me in the loop on that. I'd love to know if you get that program going, that pilot program. ⁓ And yeah, just see if there's any ways that I can support. thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure talking to you, learning about the journey, your personal journey, and ⁓ Men Creating Peace and just all the powerful.

Devon Gaster (51:04)
I will.

Jordan Thierry (51:21)
life-changing work that you've done with people to be better, to be safe in their relationships, to find their authentic, truer, peaceful selves, right? Truly appreciate you for all that work that you do and the work that you're gonna continue to do. Before we jump off, is there anything else you wanna kinda share with our listeners?

Devon Gaster (51:40)
Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to look at this podcast. ⁓ Thank you for your support. We have a website you can go to and find out a lot more about our program. It's www.mencreatingpeace.org. So there are stories, are testimonials, there's films about the program and the work we did in Alameda County and the work that we continue to do. So that's another way that they can get hold of me if...

You ever know someone that is struggling with their anger or their abusive behavior and they want to get some help before they get involved in the criminal justice system or before they cause further harm to their family or their partner, please put them in touch with me. I work with folks, I'll work with them on a sliding scale. Like I said, we work on a weekly, weekly basis, one on one through Zoom. And I use the same curriculum that I've used for these 17 years of doing the program.

So that's something I'd really like the listeners to appreciate. I work with men all over the world. So I have clients in Canada, I clients in Germany, have clients in different parts of the United States. So it's not a problem. As long as they've got a good computer internet access and they can work with me on Zoom, I can work with anybody anywhere. And then anytime any of your listeners may have an opportunity for a guest speaker.

Jordan Thierry (52:53)
Okay.

Devon Gaster (52:57)
or someone to present about this work. I've got 28 years experience in the field. I've done a lot of work in this field and I have a lot to share. If ever they know something like that, please contact me through the website or through Jordan. You'll put my information up as far as, know, my bio has my website on there. And then you can also send me an email through that or call me directly.

Jordan Thierry (53:12)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Devon Gaster (53:20)
And I just

appreciate you also, Jordan, and the support over the years that you had for our organization and the belief that you had in the work that we were doing. We worked on several different projects, and I just appreciate the doors that you opened for me and the introductions that you made for me here in California and throughout. And it continued. Our work continues, and our relationship, I hope, will continue for many, many years to come.

Jordan Thierry (53:45)
100%. I got you brother. And it's I've learned much more from you than I'm sure you learned from me. But thank you. It's been a mutually beneficial relationship. Thanks again for jumping on the podcast. It's been a pleasure to have you and have a great rest of your day.

Devon Gaster (53:58)
name to you. Thank you Jordan and good luck with this podcast series. really am looking forward to watching it.

Jordan Thierry (54:04)
Thank