Last month a 13-year old Covington, Indiana boy killed himself. His passion was baseball. He had a batting average of around .400 last season, and on the Saturday before he died, he threw a pitch that clocked in at 71 mph. Not surprisingly, he dreamed of playing in the major leagues. But he was relentlessly…Continue reading Why Youth Suicide Is Up 15 Percent
Buried in the book of Ecclesiastes is the concept that if we wait for all conditions to be ideal, we will never sow a seed or reap a harvest. It’s in Chapter 11, actually. It is also said, “From a tiny acorn a mighty oak doth grow,” a saying that has inspired so many who…Continue reading From a Tiny Acorn
Click here for a full size version of the graphic. When you hear that 75 percent of the juveniles in prison come from fatherless homes, an alarm goes off. There is absolutely a tie between the lack of a father in the home and kids who get sent to prison. Here in Indianapolis, Fathers &…Continue reading The Revealing Statistics of Incarceration & Recidivism
What a revelation to have found Daniel Labbe’s blog, Between The Bars. He is a former inmate with some well conceived thoughts about what an improved prison/jail experience could be. The following are his words, but I wouldn’t be sharing them if I didn’t think there are some ideas that have merit. So, if you…Continue reading A Mindful Approach to Prison Reform?
When a short-term money crisis hits a family, payday predatory lenders are there for the working poor. These lenders reap huge interest payments that, according to the Federal Trade Commission, can reach up to 390 APR. Meanwhile these companies regularly take working people down the path to bankruptcy. The car broke down and you have…Continue reading Payday Lenders: Another Chance to Fix This
Last week a 15-year old and 17-year old were arrested for the shooting of a 15-year-old girl on the City’s far east side. Also last week a national newspaper reported statistics on juvenile homicide. It’s reported that juvenile murderers acting alone rose 30 percent in 2020 from a year earlier, while homicides committed by multiple…Continue reading “Just Kids Killing Kids”
UNITE INDY started in December, 2016, so we have recently passed our 5th anniversary! Yes, five years of disappointments, mistakes and some smashing successes (if we do say so ourselves). 🙂 All those things have worked to elevate our ability to impact poverty as we find employment for those who are reentering society after incarceration….Continue reading Five Years Old: Our Disappointments, Mistakes, & Goals Realized
I picked up a book at a Vintage fair just before Christmas. It was a slim little volume, written by Bud Robinson, who was born in 1860 into a family of seven children, all living in a tiny, windowless, dirt-floored log cabin in the hills of Tennessee. His father was a mean drunkard who owned…Continue reading What Are We Made Of?
For all those working with reentrants, or related to someone who is incarcerated, I end this year with my take on some of the important lessons I’ve learned about the pitfalls that sidetrack even the most success-oriented returnees. Here you go: Pitfall #1 – Thinking I’m back!: You are not… yet. Reentry is a marathon,…Continue reading Avoiding the Top 10 Reentry Pitfalls
Recently there has been an exodus of folks from a large popular church here. People who were staunchly committed to a certain ideology found that the temperature had changed and some foundational beliefs were now considered to be out-of-date. In response, a group of long-time members picked up and went elsewhere for their divine guidance….Continue reading When A Church Splits
