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Program provides help, support to ex-offenders
Sunday, June 01, 2008
SPRINGFIELD — In the next six months, Clark County might see an influx of as many as 340 ex-offenders with specific release dates and 40 to 50 more who will appear before parole boards anticipating release.
When those ex-offenders are released, the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Clark County will reach out to them. The organization is working — through its Opportunities for New Direction program — to help ex-offenders find their way back to responsible, productive lives.
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"OIC has always worked with
ex-offenders over the organization's 37-year history," said Mike
Calabrese, executive director.
OND teaches ex-offenders
employment and life skills to help participants learn what they need and don't need.
"It's about helping them learn new routines and learn how to go about getting what they need in the right way," said OND program coordinator Bobby Mims.
OND was created in 2002 with funds from the Clark County Department of Human Services. The program now receives additional monies that come from a renewable state grant as part of the Governor's Strengthening Ohio's Families Initiative which comes out of the Governor's office of faith-base and community initiatives. OIC officials declined to say how many ex-offenders the program has helped since its inception.
Local funds come from a Community Service block grant and The Springfield Foundation.
"We just found out our state grant has been renewed for the 2008-09 term," Mims proudly announced
Friday, May 30.
The additional money coming into the program allowed OND to partner with other community organizations and allows Mims to travel into Ohio prisons and work directly with Clark County residents before their release, recruiting them and starting the rehabilitation process as soon as possible, Calabrese said.
On a 2007 visit to Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell, Ohio, Mims recognized a face he hadn't seen in years.
He met Alex Norris, a 1990 Springfield South High School graduate who was serving his fourth prison sentence since 1993.
"I told Alex we needed to be his first stop when he got out," Mims said of the now grown man who had once been a member of his Little Tigers football team.
Norris became affiliated with OND in Oct. 2007 and is now actively looking for work in the construction trades.
His participation in the program has prepared him with highly employable trade skills, but more importantly, he said, he realized it became time to stop talking about changing his life and start doing it.
"I'm staying at it," he said. "Being persistent. I want to be accountable for every word and deed. Every day I wake up, I'm ready to be better."
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0371 or elroberts@coxohio.com.
