![]() ![]() Nationally, there’s a great need,” Burton advises. “I would say look at the need in your community. ![]() She has sometimes gone from house to house on the weekend, meeting the new residents, “to talk with them to see what their hopes and dreams were, and get a gauge of how hard they’re willing to work toward those hopes and dreams,” she says.īurton has some clear recommendations for those who want to replicate her model, including taking the free SAFE training. Burton sees ANWOL’s residents as “amazing survivors of so much harm,” but doesn’t get to interact with them as often in her role as president. As gratifying as it is to see her organization and approach reaching people who need it, Burton feels a bit nostalgic about those early days. SAFE offers a free, 3-day training to transfer ANWOL’s learnings to other reentry programs the network hopes to resume in-person events in 2021. To replicate her model, Burton has formed the Sisterhood Alliance for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) Housing Network. The current scale of operations is a far cry from that three-bedroom house that got it all started, where she slept in the dining room so she could offer as many bedrooms as possible. ![]() “They have to put the work in, but the support around connecting them to the various activities they want to engage in is there for them.” Burton also empowers women to act as advocates for social change working to pass legislation to reform the criminal justice system and restore the civil rights of formerly incarcerated people. “One of the things that I think is very different about ANWOL is that we ask people what they need and what they want, then we help them achieve that,” Burton remarks. Helped place 45 out of 68 women who were seeking jobs in employment.Helped 53 women access education opportunities.Helped 33 women secure permanent housing.Served 78 women (mothers of 63 minor children and 57 adult children).That year alone, ANWOL accomplished the following: In 2019, 9 out of every 10 women served ultimately met benchmarks identified as necessary for successful reentry after periods of incarceration, and 99 percent of the women served were not reincarcerated. Legal staff assist with expungement of criminal records and with family reunification. Residents attend 12-step meetings, are referred for mental health treatment if needed, and are helped with accessing education or finding a job. It focuses on the needs of the individual more so than the structure of the program or the housing model.”ĪNWOL homes are alcohol- and drug-free environments, which many of the women need to meet the conditions of their parole. “Our approach is much different,” Burton explains. They don’t have to check in and out or urinate in a bottle to stay in ANWOL housing, which now includes 10 homes. What differentiates ANWOL from more traditional halfway houses or other government-run housing, which Burton has examined in a narrative evaluation, is the level of freedom the women have to regain control over their lives. We had time to heal and discover the effects of racism in our lives.” “We didn’t have much, but we had enough to maintain the house and to support one another to recover from many things-from incarceration, from addiction, from loss, from family separation. “I offered them a safe place to go,” Burton says of the founding of ANWOL, of which she is president. “It angered me a bit,” Burton says, “but that also fueled me to do something about it.” She used her savings to buy that three-bedroom house in Watts and started meeting women when they got off the bus from prison in Downtown L.A.’s Skid Row. Her experience there stood in stark contrast to what she knew about the difficulty of accessing services in South L.A., where the population is more racially diverse and less economically advantaged. Since then, the project has become a nationally and internationally replicated model for helping women leaving incarceration to rebuild their lives, their families, and their communities.īurton turned her life around with the support she received in a recovery home in Santa Monica, a largely White, affluent community. Burton started the A New Way of Life (ANWOL) Reentry Project in 1998 with a 3-bedroom house in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California. Incarcerated multiple times over 15 years, after the accidental death of her young son led her to addiction to cocaine and crack, Burton has since turned heartbreak into hope, and pain into promise. Susan Burton knows the pain of the women she serves.
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