Community Service
Cook County Jail
I volunteer to help incarcerated individuals with their GED preparation as my mom’s teacher’s assistant. I also do the math and problem-solving work that is part of the course she teaches.
Hearing from these men and women with vastly different experiences from my own widened my perspective on the diverse lives we all lead.
At the end of my sophomore year, I wrote and eventually published an essay about the challenges of the reentry process post-incarceration.
Link to the published essay on Critical Debates HSGJ.
Hinda Helps
This institute’s mission is to empower justice-impacted families affected by institutionalization, trauma, and crisis.
How can we best re-enter society after decades behind bars? What have we learned while incarcerated that we can repurpose to serve us on the outside?
I assist my mom who designs and teaches courses for formerly incarcerated individuals who are learning to be mentors for people newly released from prison.
This first video clip exemplifies what I have learned at Hinda Helps. Listening to lived experiences far from my own has exposed me to a form of knowledge I don’t often get outside of home: personal wisdom.
In the second clip, Michael, a man who spent decades incarcerated, responds to my mom’s request for feedback about the class. Knowing who Michael is and where he comes from, his compliments of my work in and out of Hinda Helps was a reminder of how important it is to humanize, empathize, and support those who need it. Moments like this bring a new meaning to my community service. They bring life to it.
The Development and Program Coordinator, the Director of a recovery community, and I celebrate a formerly incarcerated individual becoming certified to be a peer mentor, pictured center-right.