The road to success is never easy. For women who have been incarcerated that road can be even more difficult. One local organization is celebrating its groundbreaking accomplishments with a virtual chat.
After a massive expansion of services and programming, The Reentry Initiative, or TRI, a nonprofit organization — based in Longmont — supports individuals who are reentering the community from incarceration, will host virtual chats on Apr. 13 and Apr. 15. These chats invite community members and stakeholders an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments and future plans of the nonprofit.
Founded in 2016 with a class of women preparing for release from Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, the nonprofit has grown over the year to include post-release supports, employment services and mental health and wellness services, according to Executive Director Emily Kleeman.
“In the last five years we have pulled together all areas of our programming,” Kleeman said. “So now we are considered a one-stop-shop in Longmont for people who are on parole to come and access an array of different services.”
Support services include financial assistance for varying needs including hygiene and clothing, transportation assistance, employment and education, including certifications in higher learning.
Other services include a life skills program where clients can join classes to learn about budgeting and financial basics.
One of the most recent additions to the organization’s repertoire of services is the Wellness Center, located in Longmont, which launched in August of 2020, according to Kleeman.
“In the Wellness Center, we’re bringing together different evidence based interventions to help our men and women process trauma that underlie mental health and substance abuse disorders,” she said.
The center offers interventions geared toward cognitive behavioral therapy, substance abuse relapse prevention and more specific individual or group interventions such as pain management and nonviolent communication, Kleeman said.
“What we're really doing is teaching them more about their internal processes as well as how their communication works, how their mind process (things) and why they react the way they do,” she said. “We are bringing more dignity and respect to the obligations that they already have to do on parole.”
The integration of all these different elements into the service TRI provides has yielded successful outcomes and it is what sets it apart from other organizations doing similar work, Kleeman said.
Currently, the organization is serving nearly 145 individuals with over 100 of those enrolled only since 2018. Over 30 individuals are being served through the Wellness Center receiving services for mental health or substance abuse.
A total of 30 women have been enrolled in the pre-release course at the correctional facility, 22 of which have been released and are fully employed and some have even been released from parole early, such is the story of Amy, whose name was changed due to privacy and safety concerns.
Amy began working with TRI behind the walls at Denver Women’s Correctional Facility prior to her release. At age 19, after a childhood being shuffled around foster care homes, she picked up her first felony charge and ended up in the correctional facility for eight years.
When Kleeman met Amy, she was already 25 and it was then they started to work together, Kleeman said.
Her story is a story of success,” she said. “She was very quiet and didn't have much to really talk about at first. As we got to know her and we put her in our pre-release class she began to open up. We started working with her very intensely around transition planning.”
After Amy’s release and with TRI’s support on a weekly basis, she has gained and maintained employment, is currently looking to buy her first home, has been reunited with her child and is working to gain full parental custody.
“She has since started a nice relationship with a partner who is really supportive and on top of that she called me last week and told me she was released from parole two and a half years early,” Kleeman said.
Interviews with Amy and another one of TRI’s clients will be played during the two virtualchats the organization is hosting later this month, according to Wayne Simmons, chairperson to the nonprofit’s board of directors and spouse of the organization’s founder, Debra Simmons.
“We did that (video interviews) to let them (clients) talk about their experience of being a client in real life and how it's helped them,” Simmons said.
Besides a discussion about whereTRI is now, the virtual chats will also serve to disclose the new strategic direction for the organization, he said.
“Well a big part of it (what’s coming) is expanding our services and expanding the number of people we can serve … we've created a Wellness Center and we are working to expand the ability to do mental health in conjunction with the other services that we have historically provided at the Welcome Back Center,” he said.
“We are trying to do more partnering for outreach and advocacy on criminal justice reform. We're not going to be the spearhead, but we want to be more supportive to other groups and partner with other groups in terms of advocacy for change.”
The virtual with Kleeman and Simmons will take place via Zoom on Apr. 13, 12 - 1 p.m., and Apr. 15, 5 - 6 p.m.
The events are free and registrations are asked to be filled by Apr. 12.
