Podcasts about offender aid

Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR) works with men and women who are returning to the community from incarceration. In this episode, we are joined by OAR's Executive Director, Elizabeth Jones Valderrama, who explains OAR's upstream and downstream approach to restoring individuals to society, and fighting the roots of racism that lead to higher rates of incarceration. Learn about OAR's partnerships with local governments, law enforcement, and volunteers, and the steps individuals and communities can take to undo, challenge and break down racism and to begin to see each other as human beings. We also learn about Elizabeth's ten rescue cats (technically, her husband's), and her family's Costa Rican traditions (including music night!). Plus, everyone prepares for the real Mayan apocalypse, which is apparently this weekend. Follow OAR at @OARJustice and follow the show on Twitter at @HousingPodcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the show, give us a good rating, and send an email to podcast@nacced.org!

JAIL is a result, event-driven, choice involved, power stripping, a visible shift. However, within the jail cell inside each inmate is the power of transformation. Transformation is process-driven, choice involved and resides internally. Opportunities, Alternatives & Resources, (OAR) is missioned to rebuild lives and create a safer community with opportunities, alternatives, and resources for justice-involved individuals and their families. OAR is a local non-profit restorative justice organization providing human services since 1971. Its history has its roots in the highest principles of human rights, and the most practical applications of a community’s enlightened self-interest and citizen action. Its origins can be traced to a 1968 prison strike at the State Penitentiary in Richmond, Virginia. In response, several local churches convened a conference on Churches and the Correctional System. Following that effort, Jay Worrall, Jr. founded the OAR movement, which at the time stood for Offender Aid and Restoration. It was his vision of citizen visitors helping jail inmates that formed the original premise for the creation of OAR organizations around the country. My conversation with Brandon Cosby, Director of Development at OAR is story-rich, informative, and hopeful. He answers questions you may not have known to ask about this space and its residents. You will want to know more.    

Executive coach Dana Theus and the executive director of OAR, Inc. (Offender Aid and Restoration) Elizabeth Jones are coupled in this quick lesson in the power of networks in our personal and professional success -- whether we're climbing the business ladder or getting back in the game after an incarceration. The secret: curiosity, of course! All that in under five minutes...

Elizabeth Jones, executive director of Offender Aid and Restoration of Arlington County (OAR), brings her incredible warmth to a conversation about what happens to curiosity before, during and after incarceration. We explore the impact of trauma and how to rebuild and redirect curiosity in the process of returning to home and society. Join us next time for a conversation with Scott Nycum on curiosity and leadership.

We are not our worst mistake, and without all of us—flaws and all—we aren’t a full community. In this episode Laura Weimer interviews Elizabeth Jones Valderrama, Executive Director of Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR) of Arlington, Alexandria, and Falls Church

Kathi Wolfe is a poet and writer. Wolfe's most recent collection, The Uppity Blind Girl Poems, winner of the 2014 Stonewall Chapbook Competition, was published by BrickHouse Books in 2015. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wordgathering, Gargoyle, Poetry Magazine, and other publications. In 2013, Finishing Line Press published Wolfe's poetry chapbook The Green Light. Her collection Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. She was a 2008 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow. Wolfe is a contributor to the groundbreaking anthology Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. She is a contributor to the Washington Blade, the acclaimed LGBT newspaper.David Eberhardt has published three books of poetry: The Tree Calendar, Blue Running Lights, and Poems from the Website, Poetry in Baltimore.He is at work on amemoir:For All the Saints. As a peace protester, Dave was incarcerated at Lewisburg Federal Prison in 1970 for 21 months for pouring blood on draft files with Father Philip Berrigan and two others to protest the Vietnam War. He is retired after 33 years of work as a Director of Offender Aid and Restoration at the Baltimore City Jail.Gregg Mosson is the author of two books of poetry, Questions of Fire and Season of Flowers and Dust. From 2003 through 2010, he founded and edited the magazine Poems Against War: a Journal, which published seven issues and remains archived online at www.poemsagainstwar.com. He is a former reporter and commentator whose work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Baltimore Sun, The Oregonian, The Baltimore Review, and The Futurist. His poetry has appeared in many small-press journals. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, he has taught both at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Baltimore. He is a former contributing poetry editor at The Baltimore Review. In Cleveland, full of love and kumquats, we leave our favorite Chinese place. "You should watch her! She might fall!" a prune-faced woman growls. I do and I enjoy it, you whisper.--from “Love and Kumquats” by Kathi Wolfe (previously published in the Potomac Review and Wordgathering) O this world of sad disappearances- another species gone today, I felt it Slipping- I don't think I can do without the great apes!- militias filtering through The forests-  paws sold for rifles, mountains silver moon lit- silver back Paws made into ash trays[....]--from "Great Apes" by David Eberhardt                               [...H]e speaks his poetry before sixteen people on a Sunday, and the words quiver like a finger sliding along a razor, back-and-forth from rage to care . . . care to rage . . . rage to care.--from "Unknown Soldier (for David Eberhardt)" by Gregg Mosson  

Kathi Wolfe is a poet and writer. Wolfe's most recent collection, The Uppity Blind Girl Poems, winner of the 2014 Stonewall Chapbook Competition, was published by BrickHouse Books in 2015. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wordgathering, Gargoyle, Poetry Magazine, and other publications. In 2013, Finishing Line Press published Wolfe's poetry chapbook The Green Light. Her collection Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. She was a 2008 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow. Wolfe is a contributor to the groundbreaking anthology Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. She is a contributor to the Washington Blade, the acclaimed LGBT newspaper.David Eberhardt has published three books of poetry: The Tree Calendar, Blue Running Lights, and Poems from the Website, Poetry in Baltimore.He is at work on amemoir:For All the Saints. As a peace protester, Dave was incarcerated at Lewisburg Federal Prison in 1970 for 21 months for pouring blood on draft files with Father Philip Berrigan and two others to protest the Vietnam War. He is retired after 33 years of work as a Director of Offender Aid and Restoration at the Baltimore City Jail.Gregg Mosson is the author of two books of poetry, Questions of Fire and Season of Flowers and Dust. From 2003 through 2010, he founded and edited the magazine Poems Against War: a Journal, which published seven issues and remains archived online at www.poemsagainstwar.com. He is a former reporter and commentator whose work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Baltimore Sun, The Oregonian, The Baltimore Review, and The Futurist. His poetry has appeared in many small-press journals. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, he has taught both at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Baltimore. He is a former contributing poetry editor at The Baltimore Review. In Cleveland, full of love and kumquats, we leave our favorite Chinese place. "You should watch her! She might fall!" a prune-faced woman growls. I do and I enjoy it, you whisper.--from “Love and Kumquats” by Kathi Wolfe (previously published in the Potomac Review and Wordgathering) O this world of sad disappearances- another species gone today, I felt it Slipping- I don't think I can do without the great apes!- militias filtering through The forests-  paws sold for rifles, mountains silver moon lit- silver back Paws made into ash trays[....]--from "Great Apes" by David Eberhardt                               [...H]e speaks his poetry before sixteen people on a Sunday, and the words quiver like a finger sliding along a razor, back-and-forth from rage to care . . . care to rage . . . rage to care.--from "Unknown Soldier (for David Eberhardt)" by Gregg Mosson  Recorded On: Wednesday, October 7, 2015