Our R.E.A.L. Approach
At ReGenHope, we are all about R.E.A.L. (Responsibility, Empowerment, Accountability & Legacy) – our strengths-based model for preparing returning citizens to successfully embrace their second chances. This five-step model focuses on identifying individual, family and community assets and building on them to promote positive, long-term change. Review: In getting off to a good start, we begin with a comprehensive review of the landscape, using a variety of research-informed assessment tools to rate both individual and community reentry-readiness:
At ReGenHope, we are all about R.E.A.L. (Responsibility, Empowerment, Accountability & Legacy) – our strengths-based model for preparing returning citizens to successfully embrace their second chances. This five-step model focuses on identifying individual, family and community assets and building on them to promote positive, long-term change. Review: In getting off to a good start, we begin with a comprehensive review of the landscape, using a variety of research-informed assessment tools to rate both individual and community reentry-readiness:
- Self-assessment instruments for returning citizens to identify personal goals, valuable competencies, and existing resources, as they begin to map out a customized life plan
- A community assessment instrument that enables justice agencies to evaluate and proactively address community strengths and challenges that will have an impact on reentry success.
-
- Volunteer peer mentors and advocates, recruited from among formerly incarcerated individuals who have been successful, and trained to provide effective support, grounded in hard-earned personal experience.
- Family support groups, led by trained volunteer facilitators, that provide a safe and supportive space for exploring difficult topics, making critical connections, and sharing relevant resources.
- Community events to raise awareness and build alliances among government agencies and service providers; businesses, faith organizations and academic institutions.
- Finding and sustaining gainful employment and stable housing
- Making meaningful connections
- Embracing personal leadership
- Adopting healthy lifestyles
- Leveraging a network of life-enhancing community resources.
- Formal agreements with community reentry partners that outline a process for resource referral and access, based on individual housing, employment, educational, and healthcare needs
- Online community reengagement guides for locating prospective employers, affordable housing, reliable service resources, volunteer opportunities, and relevant public agencies.
- Peer mentorships and volunteer-facilitated support groups that enable returning citizens to openly discuss ongoing challenges, elicit effective advice for meeting them, and celebrate milestones met on the way to self-sufficiency.
R.E.A.L. Workshop
The R.E.A.L. Workshop is an interactive session taught by a diverse group of justice involved individuals and/or family members that provides the opportunity to share experiences from many different perspectives. The people who created and teach this workshop include women and men who are formerly incarcerated and are now home and on the right track, people who have never been incarcerated but have been affected in some way by the justice system, mothers of incarcerated men, children of incarcerated parents, and law enforcement professionals who have worked in the justice system.
R.E.A.L. Community Event
R.E.A.L. stands for Reaching Community Awareness, Community Engagement, Community Accountability & Leadership
The reentry program is developed and taught by people who have been impacted by and work in the justice system so that the community has a better understanding of the significance of the role they play in the reentry process.