The Goodwill Meeting

This week, Goodwill Industries came behind the fence to meet the IT certificate grant students.  A significant portion of the grant is devoted to place these forty men in jobs and assist them with re-entry into their community.  Goodwill Industries partnered with the community college to participate as the re-entry coordinator.  But, they did more than that.  Goodwill put $100,000 of their own money into this program.  Starting in September, Goodwill will direct seminar programs for these forty men preparing them for life outside the structured confines of prison.  And, they will find work for each man.  They will meet with them, monitor their progress and make sure prison is a thing of the past.

Three members of the Goodwill team directly responsible for these men and this program came to the prison Wednesday.   Before the meeting, almost to a man, the attitude about Goodwill was “too good to be true”.   Afterwards, without exception, every man in the room “saw the light”.  They believed in Goodwill; believed in themselves.

What changed?  They met the people.  The program director spoke first.  A man about my age with a gray beard, he talked about Goodwill’s commitment to helping anyone in need.  “Twenty years we’ve dedicated ourselves to helping released inmates return to society.”  Then his voice lowered and he told everyone about his closest friend at church.  “I knew him fifteen years before he found the courage to tell me he’d spent five years in prison in the late sixties for a robbery.  He was a decent man who made a mistake, paid his debt and for years was not accepted back in the community.  That wasn’t right.”

As the men quietly listened he added his own son had been to jail twice, both times arising out of alcohol abuse.  “You guys aren’t unique.  Everyone makes mistakes.  Ultimately we’re all the same and we all deserve a second chance.”

Then the employment director spoke.  A forty-something black woman, she sold the guys right out of the chute when she said, “I know exactly what you are thinking.  I sat in the same place when I was ready for my release from the women’s prison in ’03.  I did five years, lost my kids, was addicted to drugs.  Goodwill helped me when I was released.”

The president of the Community College then spoke.  He reminded the men that they were a first.  At a meeting a week earlier in New Orleans, community college presidents from around the country saw the video of the program.  “How can we do the same thing?” over and over, he was asked.

$52 billion.   That’s what the states and Federal government spend annually to hold nearly three million people in prison.  $800,000 and the dedication of a few college instructors and Goodwill Industries may show our country a better way.  America’s current prison system is a colossal failure.  A little goodwill may do more than any prison ever accomplished.  For one day at least, forty men believed.