My biggest hurdle this month is to take a program that I designed and give the beautiful, creative and amazing persons around me, the space to make it their program. Ninety mentors have the space to step up and make the program theirs by submitting their own CREATIVE SOLUTIONS that will translate in a way to help the adults in custody here to realize their full potential, with the ultimate goal of sending people home to their communities as WHOLE and HEALTHY AS CAN BE.
Whole, healthy people are able to realize their dreams, they are able to benefit their community and their earth.
Whole, healthy people are easier to work with, live next door to, and employ or be employed by.
Whole, healthy people are harder to victimize, and are less likely to re-offend.
It’s all about the tax payers getting a better RETURN ON INVESTMENT. If it costs $30,000 to $56,000 to house me A YEAR.
Yes, your tax payer money houses me to the tune of $56,000 a year due to my age. This means that by putting me in prison on what is actually a victemless crime, CONSPIRACY to possess a controlled substance- the tax payers flip the bill to the tune of $1,680,000.
Take a minute to think about what $1,680,000 would do to improve your child’s school or your community.
If I did half my time, that would be like adding $840,000 to a fund for schools, the earth, veterans or someone’s grandmothers care. Just saying.
Don’t even get me started on how much that would add to my parent’s lives, as I would no longer be an unemployed writer living only on their grace.
Here we are arriving at our next COMPARE AND CONTRAST. I too have spent my time reading financial magazines- Bloomberg is my favorite. Michael Bloomberg is my other favorite Mike only after Audio Mike. Any of you who are paying attention to my efforts know just the guy I mean.
Santos knows all about RETURN ON INVESTMENT. What makes sense to me is that tax payers deserve a better RIO on the money they are putting in the pot that pays to ” house us ” for all these years.
Just the other day, I was working in the garden and I noticed an AIC sitting on the porch out in front of the Lieutenant’s office, she was crying. She was leaving the next day after having served 1o or 15 years. I invited her to the garden to help me pull weeds. I asked her what she was so upset about, ” I am leaving tomorrow and I have no idea what the next part of my life looks like”
That is $360,000 wasted by my calculations.
The education department here locked Michael’s books in a closet and said that they would never run a program here written by an ex-offender. That is crazy, one of the women who taught me- literally how to live and kept me from dying at the beginning of my sentence-was an ex-offender. She is a professor now at Fairmont State University. Shout out and kudos to
Dr. Gerry Kirby.
The most frightening part of that story to me is that the message is clear, ” you are not now, nor will you ever by, valuable, no matter how much fancy book learning you have .”
I would be totally freaked out by this, if it weren’t for the fact that we have this other thing going on here, this group of amazing women who do see value in helping us to realize our dreams, translate them into attainable goals and through the focus on total wellness, giving us the space to help each other create a path that we can see- to a brighter future- the tools that translate to a solid re-entry.
Those women are Captain Mosby, who first saw my vision as valuable and played the devil’s advocate and gave me the space I needed to test my theories. Ms. Trotman, our AW or Programs who came here at just the right time and yes, throwing her name around helped me get the logistics figured out. Ms. Spicer from psychology, who understood the value and really pushed for the program and most importantly, social worker Daniel, who was brave and bold enough to co-sign on a program that is so different, like nothing that has ever been done before, certainly not here in Aliceville FCI; a program where ninety mentors ( ten in each dorm ) make up the PEER SUCCESS TEAMS; plus one strong leader from each unit, directing these teams, who make up the think tank, PEER SUCCESS TEAM LEADERSHIP.
Cheers to them.
As a woman of honor, I see their dedication as a responsibility- where I must do my very best to see it actualized to the fullest capacity.
