In 2017, Realness Project’s executive director, Laurie Lazar, began co-facilitating a Victim Impact Class at the Boulder County Jail. While the participants were engaged in the discussions, she wondered if the class had real long-term, transformational impact on the participants’ lives. With a Masters in Education and a certification in AR (Authentic Relating), Laurie’s curiosity began to grow as she started to visualize adding in the critical tools of AR into the curriculum. For example, how might the participant’s lives be impacted if they were intentionally trained to address conflict through skillful communication? Could the experiences of AR give inmates a higher percentage of success once released from incarceration?

In a serendipitous moment, Laurie connected with friend and colleague Ryel Kestano, who was using AR methods while mentoring men at the Boulder County Jail. His company, Authentic Relating Training International, had just launched a two-day program called “The ART of Being Human,” and they delivered it throughout Europe and the US to the general public. Together, Laurie and Ryel brought the first-ever Authentic Relating workshop to the Boulder County Jail in January of 2018. 

Many of the men in this workshop had been in Laurie’s Victim Impact class, and now she was able to observe their marked difference in engagement and excitement through the AR method.

After two days of training, participants began to convey their feelings about the ineffectiveness of their previous therapy and intervention programs, expressing that there was nothing like this program offered in the correctional system and how vital it would be to expand into the Department of Corrections regionally and nationally. 

That weekend was a game-changer for Laurie. She began reaching out to prisons throughout Colorado, offering the two-day workshop. From the movies, many of us know that it's not so easy to break out of prison. But what we don’t learn is that it's also hard to break in! Laurie called many prisons before one finally said yes. The first prison they delivered The ART of Being Human in was the highest level of security prison, Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, CO. The class was half men who are labeled as sex offenders and half mentally challenged men. They didn’t know if this group would be receptive. And yet, even though the skepticism, a transformation occurred.

Laurie’s questions were being answered as she witnessed personal transformation happening for the participants. After delivering the workshop to dozens of incarcerated people in several institutions, the Realness Project was born!

As of 2024, Realness Project has delivered workshops to nearly 1000 men and women in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

We invite you to join us  as we imagine a world where we can collectively shift how we communicate, breaking down walls and barriers that separate us racially, culturally, and socioeconomically. And breaking generational cycles of distrust, violence, addiction and incarceration. Now that is transformation!