Our Work

Formerly Incarcerated

Returning Citizens Booster Luncheon is The League’s annual marquee event, bringing together hundreds of returning citizens, their families and supporters to celebrate and support their successful reentry as business owners, nonprofit executives, reform advocates, film makers, and authors, and to build their individual agency and collective power.

For us. By us. Celebrating and organizing returning citizens.

Currently Incarcerated

S.A.N.I.T.Y. Project (Standing Against Negative Influences Towards Youth) is a month-long series of weekly workshops that cultivated vulnerability and responsibility among hundreds of incarcerated fathers from 2014 through 2017, nurturing the hope and purpose that sustains men through long periods of uncertainty and isolation, and prepares them to break the cycle of incarceration in their families through successful reentry and embracing parenthood.

At Risk of Incarceration

VA Basketball League for Safer Streets has been reducing crime and gun violence since 2017. Workshops focused on conflict resolution, critical thinking, and problem solving among young men from “high crime areas” are led by experts with relatable lived experience. Our partners at the Richmond Police Department play in the league and report a reduction in violent crime when the league runs its three 12 week sessions for over 300 players each year.

No Workshop. No Jumpshot.

We Pray Together. We Play Together.

We Are Relevant (W.A.R.) Building on its 7 year track record of success engaging young men through its basketball program, and its prior success in curriculum development and facilitation of workshops for men and women in prison, The League is currently piloting a new initiative to work with middle and high school students in Richmond’s public schools. 

Mental Health and Community Support

Peer to Peer Mentorship to support the mental health of men, women, and juveniles who are formerly incarcerated, currently incarcerated, and at risk of incarceration, as well as their families. Mentors share lived experience about what is required to overcome The Other PTSD (Prison Traumatic Stress Disorder) – the anxieties and uncertainties of entering back into society and staying out of ‘the system’ – as well as connections to vetted community partners offering support related to employment, housing, etc.

Policy Advocacy

To support all system-impacted people, The League organizes them to build their political power, partnering with other organizations and policymakers to support public policies that get people home, reduce recidivism, incarceration, and the harm of incarceration. 

Advisory

For friends and supporters, The League offers equity advisory services to help them better understand the lived experiences of system-impacted individuals and to support them more effectively.

The League’s first partners are the De-Carceration Fund and White Men for Racial Justice (WMRJ)