Steps to Recovery Leadership Training in DaPeCol Maximum Security Prison

Many correctional facilities are open to Celebrate Recovery (CR), a faith-based program. The U.S. Institute of Peace recognizes the efficacy of religious engagement in peace-building, and personal peace depends even more heavily on recognizing transgressions, seeking forgiveness, and overcoming guilt. Our Steps to Recovery is a pre-requisite for all our students in our correctional education. Many Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDL) are open to a program that will help them overcome the hurts, hang-ups and habits that have led to where they are.

The Social Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Business Institute (SETBI) invited Olga and Ross McClain, veteran CR leaders from Texas, to come and teach Steps to Recovery classes to a hundred future trainers in DaPeCol's maximum security. There is a way the community  can help the wounded move beyond their personal struggles to experiences the forgiveness of God. Ross and Olga taught and prayed for 140 male and female inmate leaders to fulfill their role as God-healing agents. They shared that to lead people forward in spiritual, physical, and emotional restoration is to imitate Jesus and his teachings.

Ross and Olga had attended a CR summit in California the week before, so they had the updated tools to present the CR materials. Participants ask God to search their hearts and to reveal their transgressions, so the full path to recovery could begin. The program is not solely a recovery program for addicts with chemical and alcohol addiction. It helps people find healing of wounds caused by abuse, grief, overeating, gambling and unhealthy relationships of many different kinds. It is a program that helps to remove the chemical bandage of addiction but also helps to heal the deeper wounds of hurts, habits, and hang-ups.