Heart to Heart offers an educational program in correctional facilities that’s centered around four core skills: mindfulness, empathy, decision-making, and conflict transformation.
- Mindfulness encourages learners to live more fully in the present moment.
- Empathy helps learners connect with others—and themselves—with compassion.
- Decision-making supports learners in discovering how to take their own needs and other people’s needs into account in order to make choices that best serve everyone.
- Conflict transformation helps learners find win-win solutions to seemingly intractable struggles.
Professional facilitators with extensive training and/or certification in Nonviolent Communication, meditation, and yoga teach Heart to Heart classes. Learning the skills taught by these disciplines enables incarcerated people to value and advocate for themselves, build lasting relationships with other people, and make choices that earn and preserve their freedom.
This program is comprised of several weekly, 90-minute classes in three correctional facilities: the Camden County Correctional Facility in Camden, New Jersey; Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, New Jersey; and the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.
Those who have completed Heart to Heart classes report these outcomes:
- Avoiding fights in prison so that they’re eligible to be released sooner
- Reconciling with estranged family members who had stopped communicating once they went to prison
- Parenting their children with more love and understanding
- Appreciating their own needs and the needs of those who suffered from their actions
- Being able to see things from an opposing point of view
- Getting along better with their cellmates
- Learning alternatives to violence even in the face of severe conflicts
Research from Heart to Heart’s sister program in New Mexico, Comienzos (“Beginnings”), shows that those who graduate from the program are three times more likely to keep their freedom than the general population of returning citizens.
How to make a donation:
Send checks payable to "FUND NAME" and send to: Community Foundation of South Jersey P.O. Box 446 Haddonfield, NJ 08033 For contributions of appreciated securities, please be sure to notify Lee Albright, lalbright@communityfoundationsj.org, 856-528-3385 regarding your gift at the time of transfer. In this way, stocks can easily be identified, retrieved, sold, and directed to your fund without delay. Please direct all stock contributions to: Fidelity Investments DTC Number: 0226 Account Number: X39-154555 Account Name: Community Foundation of New Jersey, our parent organization, for further credit to the Fund. For current year tax benefits, contributions must be received by December 31. Please note that with some brokerage houses we have experienced that security transfers may take 14–21 days for settlement, so please plan accordingly with your year-end giving to your fund. For wiring instructions for cash contributions, please contact Lee Albright, lalbright@communityfoundationsj.org or Patty Heath at pheath@cfnj.org or 973.267.5533, x223 For making a grant from a DAF with another charity organization, make the grant to Community Foundation of New Jersey - Fund Name, EIN 22-2281783, PO Box 446, Haddonfield, NJ 08033, please notify Lee Albright when making the grant at lalbright@communityfoundationsj.org, 856-528-3385 |