Join the Movement of Human Connection

by committing to our monthly giving program.

When you sponsor one individual, you create a ripple of human connection that impacts future generations.

Expanding Human Connection

Improve the social health of your community by providing support for successful re-entries.

For every $20/mo you donate, two people will come off the waitlist & be enrolled in our powerful training.

97% of people serving time will return to our shared neighborhoods.

OUR IMPACT

Realness works from the inside out

“Realness Project has given me the tools and the means to help mold and teach my grandchildren to break this cycle of incarceration.”

– Monsel, Realness Project Graduate

 
 

Watch this 2-minute clip to hear first hand from incarcerated graduates.

Nationally, over 50% of people who are released, return to prison.

Realness Project graduates have a recidivism rate of under 5%.

  • Parental incarceration is one of the biggest predictors of a child going to prison. 76% of Realness Project’s graduates have children on the outside.

  • A generational cycle of incarceration is when family members from more than one generation enter the justice system. Statistically, the cycle extends far beyond two generations.

  • Realness Project breaks cycles of incarceration by teaching parents new ways to be in relationship with their children, so they can model healthy communication skills.

  • If we consider the full continuum of the criminal justice process — arrest, pre-trial detention, conviction, jail, probation, imprisonment, and parole — the number of children affected is significantly larger than you may imagine.

  • “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” ~ Nelson Mandela

“It’s fair to say that the reason I'm in prison is because I didn't know how to be authentic.

Being real looks like listening, it looks like being courageous enough to be vulnerable.

We need programs like The Realness Project,

but we can’t if those resources aren’t available.”

- Perry, Realness Project Graduate

“Safety is not the lack of threat. Safety is the presence of connection.”

— Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D.,

Founding Director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium, Indiana University