- [Announcer] Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F. Osborne Foundation, the Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- On today's show we'll feature two impactful nonprofits.

Both are dedicated to bringing hope and second chances to the incarcerated.

(light music) One serves to regain purpose and a second chance, the other offers prevention initiatives that help build a better tomorrow.

(uplifting music) Welcome to "Chattanooga Stronger Together", I'm Barbara Marter.

With us today is Tim Dempsey, Executive Director of Chattanooga Endeavors.

Through many initiatives, they create second chances for men, women, and their loved ones to overcome the stigma of incarceration and to regain purpose in their lives.

Tim, thanks so much for coming here today with me.

- Of course.

- Good to be here.

- I want you to tell me what is Chattanooga Endeavors, and what is your story as the founder?

- I can start with my story as the founder.

First, my senior year at University of Notre Dame I moved into a halfway house called Dismas House.

It was part of a network, and the headquarters of the network was in Nashville.

When I got ready to graduate from college my undergraduate degree was in English literature, so there wasn't much for me to do.

(Barbara laughs) However there was an opportunity to help Chattanooga establish a project that was just like Dismas House in South Bend.

So that's what I came here to do.

And my reason for being involved, aside from needing a job and something to do with my life after college, was because that experience living with people that were incarcerated really was an eye-opener.

I mean we had all kinds of social justice programs that were attached to Notre Dame.

So understanding the issues was one thing, but being literally introduced to them in the trenches with real people that were experiencing real reentry issues was really enlightening to me.

So I couldn't literally could not understand how we could be so ineffective in our reentry policies during that year that I was at Notre Dame.

And I thought, well you know this is something that would be worthwhile to dedicate maybe a year or two to.

(Barbara and Tim laugh) Yeah that was about 30 years ago.

- Yeah, about 30 years ago.

We're still working on the one to two years, right?

- That's right, yeah.

- Oh, and so Chattanooga Endeavors, what year was that that it started?

- We started here in 1988.

- Wow.

- The original project was started in 1972.

- Okay.

- With a Catholic priest called Father Jack Hickey.

And so that was one of the very early reentry programs in Tennessee.

They were probably three or four of them that were established and operating, they were partially funded by the state back at that time.

That project still exists, Dismas House in Asheville.

Our project converted from a halfway house to a program that was focused mainly on employment because we experienced this dramatic increase of the number of people going to prison, which consequently brought a big increase to the number of people that were coming home.

And they were experiencing all kinds of problems just getting work after prison.

So we changed our focus from housing to employment back around 2000, and we ran an employment program up until recently when we changed our focus again to something that's more generic.

And the reason for that is that the number of people that are going to prison now with mental illness diagnoses has gone through the ceiling, it's increased 300%.

- Oh wow.

- Over the last 20 years.

So right now it's more likely that somebody comes home with a mental health diagnoses then without one.

And that creates a whole set of new problems for people to deal with.

- So what is Steven's Table?

- Steven's table is our beginning place.

And there has been this, idea that you should start reentry from the point of entry so that you should use that period of incarceration in a positive way to prepare people for coming home.

However that's a very difficult thing to do for a lot of different reasons, including the fact that the time that people spend in prison varies from two to three years to 15 to 20, some people are coming home after 40 years and so forth.

So trying to figure out how to make a program out of that is really complicated.

Steven's Table is our way of doing that.

Everybody, 100% of the people that are going off to Tennessee prisons from Hamilton County are identified by us, and then we reach out to them.

They're about 750 people from Hamilton County currently doing time in Tennessee prisons.

About 300 of them are on our Stevens Table list.

And what we do is we correspond with them.

We send them information and material from Chattanooga Endeavors, and then we give them the opportunity to write a volunteer and develop a relationship with them.

The purpose is really to help people remember that they haven't been forgotten.

- Oh yeah.

- But then also on top of that, what we're one of the things that we're trying to do is ease the pain of being separated from like everything that matters right?

And so that's a really difficult thing for people.

People think incarceration, the hardship is that you can't work or you can't, you know, you lose your choices, you lose, the real problem with incarceration, the real hardship of incarceration, the real pain is that you're separated from things that matter.

And so that we're trying to, you know, make sure that that doesn't make for unbearable reentry problem for them when they come home.

So Steven Stable is really a pen pal club.

- A pen pal right.

And so you need volunteers for that, right?

- We definitely do yeah.

- Because the volunteers are not actually meeting with the incarcerated people, they're just corresponding so that that prisoner now has mail coming in.

- That's right.

- And they have something to read.

- That's right.

Many people don't even get a single letter while they're incarcerated.

And so they're really abandoned there.

Steven's Table fills in that gap and creates an exchange with them and create some kind of a friendship.

And it is true that we need volunteers to do that.

We're constantly getting requests for people to start exchanging letters, and we don't always have volunteers to do it.

We create all kinds of safeties.

I mean, they don't write directly, they don't use their last name, they don't expose any identifying information, they write through our email systems.

- Oh okay.

- So that they don't actually have direct contact with people.

As they get close to their reentry, they pass that relationship back to us so that we go through a reentry planning process.

At that point, the volunteer backs out, says goodbye, ends that relationship, and then turns it over to us, and then we start doing a reentry planning process with them.

The plan, many of them can execute themselves.

I mean they're usually what people need either is a lot of help or not a lot, or not very much.

And in the not very much category, they just need to know what's there, they need to know the resources that are available for them in the community, they need to know what to do first and you know, how to contact people, what numbers to call and so forth.

For the people that need a lot of help, often what it is is that they need to figure out how to string together a bunch of public assistance.

And we try to do that by helping them with applications, finding housing that they can afford, and so forth.

Often they're disqualified for public housing and some other public assistance programs, but many of them because of their mental health diagnosis, are eligible for things like SSI.

And so that can become a you know sort of a foundational resource for them, but it's not enough to survive.

- [Barbara] Right.

- But it's not enough to start with.

- And so you start this process with them when they're getting closer to being released?

- Yeah yeah, because if you start planning their released too far in advance, you know, everything changes.

- Right.

- And so and then in fact, everything changes when they get home.

I mean this is one of our, or the things that we've learned after doing this for so many years, people's intentions shift and it's not for bad reason.

- Right.

- It's just that things are different for them than they expected when they get out.

We wanna help them with their basic needs for housing and transportation and, you know, food and identification, these kinda things.

Wanna make sure to help them with that if they need it, but our real interest is long term.

The recent research around recidivism is the re-offending rate is really startling.

I mean it persists for about 10 years, and it persists mainly because people stay in difficult circumstances during that period, and they get frustrated.

So what our intention is right now, there's not any research to support this, but our gut tells us that what's probably true is that if people can lift up their living standards they probably will be under less stress.

And then so and that comes not with a entry level job, which is what a lot of employment programs do.

They get somebody work, and then that's the end of it, they close that case, that's what we used to do.

But it comes with developing their professional skills.

So we've got great programs at Chattanooga State and other programs around here where they become eligible for it, and they can start developing professional skills.

And that can lift up their living standards and create more of a realistic opportunity for them to be sustainable in the community.

- So you kinda act like a hub and look at all these resources that are around there.

- Yeah yeah.

- Medical needs, vision needs, counseling.

- [Tim] That's right.

- Housing, mental health, education, work training, force development, all of that.

You're kinda acting like that hub and trying to circle the wagons around.

- It's a good way of putting it.

We started out initially by focusing in on the three areas that made the most sense to us, employment, education, and substance abuse.

And what we realized that we were doing was making a lot of assumptions for people.

Like not everybody needs employment, education, and substance abuse.

And even when you get into education, not everybody's starting from the same place right?

- Right.

- So what we did realize is that they're great programs in the community.

And if we did something like what the medical profession does, they call it a continuity of care.

There's like a hub, and then they broker that broker services and they coordinate services in the community.

- Right.

- So that makes our job both easier and also more effective when we're looking for partners in the community to address all the various needs.

- I love that, I love that.

And you have something else called, what is it, community building workshops?

- The community building workshop is a very unique experience.

So the person that mentored me in that process, a guy by the name of doctor Bob Roberts who learned from the founder, people may if your viewers are old enough, they'll remember the other name Scott Peck.

He wrote a book called "The Roadless Travel".

But his life work was all in this model for community building, that was really what he liked to do the most.

And the person that taught me the method used it in prison on basically a dare.

And what he discovered is that the experience of building community with other people that have been incarcerated helps them relieve all kinds of just grief.

And so it became almost like a grief workshop.

It's supposed to be a communication workshop, but as they're talking about their personal experiences, they go through the same kind of process that starts trauma treatment.

And so people come outta the experience feeling they'll say they feel lighter or they've never been able to say that to anybody before.

And so they actually make connections, but they start to work through some very difficult, painful, emotional issues.

When people have significant trauma, then when we notice that we'll refer them for a professional treatment.

But for most people, it's just a matter of processing, it was somebody else being a witness to you.

So a community building workshop is a three day, they call it a psychoeducational process, I don't know what to actually call it, but it's a three day group process that enables people to go through a series of predictable stages, and the final stage is one of pretty deep emotional connection with other people.

- Wow.

There's a lot more to Chattanooga Endeavors than I actually thought that there was.

So thank you so much for sharing that with me today and with our viewers.

Up next we'll have Joe Smith, Executive Director of Prison Prevention Ministries.

Stay tuned.

(light music) We wanna know how you serve your community.

Send us photos or videos of you or your family volunteering, and we may feature it on a future episode.

Email stronger@wtcitv.org or use the hashtag stronger WTCI on social media.

Welcome back.

We're happy to have Joe Smith with us.

He's the Executive Director of Prison Prevention Ministries.

This organization focuses on preventing recidivism and prison prevention among our youth.

Welcome, Joe, I'm so glad to have you today.

- So honored to be here.

Thank you, miss Barbara.

- Yes.

All right, so tell me, what is prison prevention and what is its mission?

- Prison Prevention Ministries, PPM for short, has been around in Chattanooga for 45 years.

Actually and you need to know this, the backstory.

- Okay.

- Roger Ingvalson was the founder.

- [Barbara] Oh yeah.

- Roger was a fighter pilot in Vietnam.

Shot down, spent two years in the Hanoi Hilton that everybody used to talk about.

In fact, Senator McCain was his roommate if you will.

- Oh wow.

- In that prison.

Well when Roger returned back to the United States, he started Prison Prevention Ministries.

And at first it was just going into the jails and just giving hope to inmates.

And over 45 years it's evolved into so much more.

So the bottom line in a word is hope, but we do that by preventing inmates from returning to prison, and preventing youth from going to prison, that's what we do.

- Oh, that's wonderful.

So what is, just really briefly, what do you do with those in the prisons?

And I know you're local and you go into Northwest Georgia.

What do you actually do with those prisoners?

- We're in Southeast Tennessee Northwest Georgia.

- Okay.

- Spend a lot of our energy at Silverdale.

- Okay.

- But we're also in Bradley County Jail and Ray County Jail, Polk County Jail.

And what we do with those inmates is so many of them have burnt bridges, don't have a place to live when they're discharged, don't have a driver's license, don't have a job.

And so what they do, they get out of after serving their time, they go right back to their old playmates and play places, they re-offend, they end up right back in prison.

So we began a mentoring relationship while they're doing their time.

- [Barbara] Okay.

- And we began to set in motion re-entry.

So helping them to get their driver's license back, helping them fill out job applications, helping them find a place to live once they're discharged.

And then once they are discharged, continuing to walk with them to make sure that they don't re-offend.

So that's primarily what we do in the prisons and jails.

- Well I love the fact that you also are working in the Hamilton County schools in the prevention part.

- Been doing that now for 27 years.

Gartrell Watkins directs that program and it's just an amazing program.

And what Gartrell does, and he goes into high schools, takes with him a former inmate that we carefully vet, and that inmate stands before students and basically tells their story.

What my life was like, what my crime was, what prison was like, what my life is like today.

And it's very very impactful.

And then we take those same kids that listen to the inmates, their presentation, and we give them tours of a local jail or Silverdale or Walker State Prison.

And it's not the scared straight kinda thing that you see on television, but we want them to be exposed to the system that they don't wanna be a part of.

The other thing that's good about that too is we've had students that's gone through that process that end up choosing a career in corrections.

- Wow.

- So it's just a powerful powerful program.

We've had so many kids that have been able to have that experience.

- You say you don't wanna scare them, but that is such an eye-opening experience for these young adults in high school to really see that, and then hopefully that will stop them, prevent them from, like prevention, prevent them from going down that road.

I love the fact that now you have a program, I don't know how long it's been in effect, called End Zone.

Now that works with what, 10 to what is it called?

Yeah, 10 to 14 males.

- Right right.

- So tell me about that.

- Well you know I had a 25 year career at the YMCA and ran a program called YCAP.

And my son continues to run that program today.

Barbara I tried to retire and I just didn't do retirement very well.

(Barbara laughs) I mean I-- - Most of us don't yeah.

- Played hard for about a year and then I was ready to go back.

So that's when I took over Prison Prevention Ministries back in 2018, after playing for a year.

And then the pandemic hit.

And when the pandemic hit, you know I'm on the school board, and I started getting calls from some of my principals up in District three where I serve on the school board, telling me that kids are not attending their virtual learning.

You know kids were supposed to be learning from home and doing their virtual.

So I had a couple principals say, "Joe we got kids that just aren't logging in, "they're not coming to school."

So I asked them to identify some of those kids, and we would pick them up early in the morning, bring them down to the church, and they were with us-- - Which church?

- Abba's House.

- Okay okay.

- Big church up in Hixon.

And they were with us all day long, all day long.

And the purpose of that was ensuring that they were doing their virtual learning like they were supposed to be doing.

(Joe laughs) And when the kids went back to school, that program was so effective, we said, why not?

Let's keep it going and do it you know like an afterschool model.

So that's what we have done.

And so these kids are referred by principal, a guidance counselor at times, and even by the juvenile courts sometimes.

So these are kids, they're struggling academically, behaviorally.

I have 16 kids today in that program.

And Barbara, I have one nuclear family, now that's 16, meaning a biological mom, biological dad.

The rest of them, it's either a grandmother or a single mom.

Most of the kids have at least one parent, some cases both parents that are incarcerated somewhere.

So it's just vitally important.

And we provide a menu of services to include tutorial support, mentoring, individual and family counseling, we teach guitar lessons.

- Oh, cool.

- We have a amateur boxing program.

We do an array of adventure based activities.

I'm an outdoors guy, so we do a lot of hiking, canoeing, and climbing, and just doing you know kid stuff.

And the reality is I get more therapy done with kids out in the woods than I ever would in a group room somewhere.

So that program has proven to be very very effective.

And we're seeing a lot of lives changed, families being reclaimed.

I mean it's just amazing.

- So basically you're kinda acting as a surrogate family around these young kids and you're taking your all those years experience with YCAP.

- That's right.

- And then just bringing it over here.

- You know I tell people all the time, it's a YCAP model, it's exactly what I've been doing for 25 years.

And I think I've shared with this with you before, Barbara, you know, my wife and I have two kids of our own, of course grown.

And but we've raised 19 foster kids.

So kids has just absolutely been our life.

And kids just need a chance.

And you know, when I was growing up, my monsters were pretend.

These kids today, their monsters are real.

And the things that they're faced with.

So they, young people need all the support that we can give 'em.

- Yeah, they do.

And so the end zone, the kids are in school during the day, but then they come Monday through Friday.

- Monday through Thursday.

- Oh Monday through Thursday.

- We pick 'em up.

- Okay.

- We pick 'em up in our vans.

- After school.

- After school, several different schools.

We transport them to Abba's House, big church up on Hixon Pike that's been gracious to give us some space to operate out of.

And then they're with us from about 2:30 til seven o'clock and that's when the parents pick 'em up.

So we do our typical day, which is group therapy and activities therapy and academic time.

And then we feed a meal, and I'm not talking about a piece of pizza.

- Wow.

- I mean, they get a meal.

So we sit down with those 16 kids and it's like a family sitting at a dinner table.

And so you know a lot of these kids, they're all on free and reduced lunch, which means they get their free breakfast at school, they get their free lunch.

A lot of them wouldn't eat again until they get back to school in the morning unless we fed them.

So we have volunteers that come in and provide those meals.

So when the parent or grandparent picks 'em up at seven o'clock in the evening, their homework's done, they're tired because they've been playing hard, their little bell's full.

So they're ready to take a shower and go to bed.

- Aw.

- So.

- And the grandmothers, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles that are taking care of these kids while their parents are incarcerated, they're seeing a difference.

And so they kinda wanna come and like hopefully say, what are you doing that's making this difference in my grandson or my nephew, or whatever.

And then now you can counsel and work with them too?

- Well, the, you know, interesting, and we have every other Tuesday night we have a mom's group that my wife leads.

- Aw.

- And it's just a place where all these mamas, grand mamas get together and they just talk, and they just share the difficulties they're having with their particular child.

And they give each other hope.

And those ladies, they fall in love with each other, they support and encourage each other.

And it's just absolutely amazing what's being done.

- Yeah I know.

And I like that you focus on five domains, the head, the heart, the health, the home, and the hobbies.

And that's just, I love that I think-- - Well you know I like to refer to that as the holistic child.

You know but let's try to touch all those areas of their little lives.

- Right.

- You know, these 10 to 14-year-olds, we think they do something and you think, don't he know better than that?

Or don't she know better than that?

- Right.

- And the reality is a lot of times the answer is no.

- They don't.

- They don't know better because they haven't been taught.

- And that's a very impressionable impressionable age for them too.

- Critical age.

- In this last, (Barbara clears throat) excuse me, this last minute that we have, every year at Christmas you do the Christmas angel.

- What we do is we identify about 300 kids that are incarcerated somewhere in again, southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia.

And we collect the names of those children of their parents.

- Parents.

- That are incarcerated.

We go to that inmate, we ask that inmate to write a letter to their child surrounding Christmas.

And then we go shopping for those 300 kids and wrap the gifts.

And we put mom and dad's name on the gift.

So when the child gets the gift, he sees this is from mom or dad.

- [Barbara] Right.

- And then we have a big party and bring in Santa Claus.

And it is just a unbelievable touching experience.

You need to come next year.

- I will, I will.

(Joe laughs) Give me an invitation, send me a reminder and I will and everything.

Joe thank you so much for coming and talking about Prison and Prevention Ministries, and sharing your heart and your passion for these young people.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

- Well thank you for having me, and thank what y'all are doing here.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

And thank you for joining us.

We hope you've learned more about the incredible work being done by nonprofits in our community.

So tell us what you think.

Email us at stronger@wtcitv.org, or use the hashtag stronger WTCI on social media.

(light music) I'm Barbara Marter.

From all of us here at WTCI, we'll see you next time.

- [Announcer] Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F. Osborne Foundation, the Schillhahn-Huskey Foundation, and viewers like you.

Thank you.