This post is from our July 2024 Enews. Read the full July 2024 Enews issue HERE:
Dear friends,
For the past six months, I’ve have had the privilege of working with a few residents (inmates) at the North Dakota State Prison on a project that culminated in a training for 14 mentors (inmates with a specific role) last week. I navigated the long, echoing hallways to U.N.I.T.Y. Village—a Restoring Promise initiative—nestled in the East Unit. Residents greeted me with curiosity, and when they learned I work in Restorative Justice, their interest turned to eagerness, sharing stories of their efforts to “do better” and “be better.”
Many of these men have spent (or will spend) decades, if not the rest of their lives, behind concrete walls and iron doors because of the harms they caused to victims and their communities. By society’s standards, these are the men who deserve to be forgotten and often are. And by anyone’s standards, a prison sentence might result in some level of hopelessness. Yet, U.N.I.T.Y. Village seemed anything but hopeless. The mentors’ passion and commitment to helping mentees (45 inmates ages 18-25) take accountability, right their wrongs, identify their strengths, and pursue their life’s higher purpose made that cell block one of the most hopeful spaces I’ve been in a long time.
Pause. Reflect. Repeat. One of the most hopeful places I have stood in years was in the center of a maximum-security prison. What lesson does this offer me? All of us?
Hope doesn’t exist in U.N.I.T.Y. Village because there’s an absence of stress or challenges: It’s a prison. The tension is thick, the air heavy to breathe. No, hope exists because of the residents’ sense of purpose and commitment to helping others grow and succeed. Hope is both a belief and an action. Hope is and hope does. When we feel hopeless or helpless, let us remind ourselves of our life’s purpose and seek opportunities to uplift and help others.
There is a mark that I must leave,
however small it may be,
a legacy of love for those
who follow after me.
Excerpt quoted from “It’s Never Too Late: A literary Project by the Inmates of Stillwater and Shakopee Prisons (1999)”
In hope,
Elizabeth Hilt, Associate Director