When I came home, I was one of the lucky ones — I came home to an amazingly supportive family, a place to live, job skills that I had acquired before my descent into the insanity of addiction, a good education. I had so many more advantages than far too many of my brothers and sisters in white.
And yet…reentry was not the cake walk that I had told myself it would be. If it was hard for me, I can only imagine how hard it would have been had any of those support pillars been taken away.
All too often, we come home from prison with nowhere to go, no way to earn a living, no way to get to or pay for the medical or behavioral treatment we need, and it becomes all too easy to return to old ways of thinking, old ways of behaving.
Let’s work together on creative solutions that answer the question – what support do YOU need? What do we need, each of us, all of us, to be successful in reintegrating into society?
We need housing, we need jobs, we need peer support and behavioral health care. RAP and the Reentry Roundtable are working hard to break down barriers to those things. Won’t you support us in our efforts?
Helen Gaebler, Past Chair of the Reentry Roundtable, has generously committed to matching every dollar of the first $1000 raised during the Reentry Roundtable’s Amplify Austin campaign. From now until 6pm on March 1st, your donation will stretch even further in supporting our work.
Help us move the needle on reentry for formerly incarcerated individuals in Austin and Travis County by donating today.
Thank you,
Laurie Pherigo
Roundable Advocacy Fellow
austinreentryroundtable@gmail.com