During the Fall of 2022, PREPARE was blessed to bring onto our staff a number of returning citizens. Each has brought their own skills, experience and insight, and together they have moved PREPARE to its next phase of development, which has entailed placing PREPARE’s parole materials in all the prison libraries, and extending PREPARE’s program to include reentry coaching post-release.
Anne Bocchini Kirsch became PREPARE’s Director of Advocacy upon leaving MCIW in September 2022, but her journey assisting people with parole did not begin then. While in MCIW Anne began figuring out what a good case for parole looks like, working tirelessly to assist women in MCIW in going up for their parole hearings prepared. Anne was instrumental in helping Maryjoel, Elizabeth and Jaqueline move the program along on the outside. Her service to others was by no means limited to parole though. She worked with Maryjoel Davis and the University of Maryland Law School to create the EaRS (Empowerment and Recovery Support) program for domestic violence survivors and she converted the Celebrate Recovery program to distance learning in order to keep some level of substance abuse programming going through the Covid lockdown. She was also a mentor in the Peer Recovery program which went on to inspire her to extend the PREPARE program to use peer recovery specialists – who developed their skills on the inside – to support PREPARE clients as they leave prison.
Sara Citroni also joined PREPARE’s team in September 2022 having left MCIW in June. She leads on the newly extended element of the PREPARE program, namely to provide ongoing mentoring for PREPARE’s clients upon their release – this is part of the PREPARE for Home phase of the program. Sara participated in the Peer Recovery program while in MCIW, and is a natural when it comes to coaching and encouraging others. Like Anne, she brings years of experience working with programming on the inside, to PREPARE’s mission on the outside. From her sweet nature you might not guess that she was well known for leading some butt-kicking workouts while in MCIW. Sara works part-time for PREPARE while at the same time completing her BA degree which she began through the Goucher Prison Education Partnership while in MCIW.
Kelli Loos left MCIW in the summer of 2021 having been one of the first clients to be served by PREPARE once it transitioned from being Second Chance for Women. Both Anne Bocchini Kirsch and Elizabeth Finne were part of the advocacy team that helped Kelli make her best case for parole – Anne supported (at that point) from the inside and Elizabeth from the outside. Kelli now serves as PREPARE’s Reentry Specialist by helping people develop strong reentry plans and by building the network of reentry providers who partner with PREPARE. Kelli brings her skills and experience from a career in the hospitality industry to her work for PREPARE – and they translate across rather nicely. It turns out that being knowledgable about hospitality databases, project management, event planning and relationship building sets you up rather well to help build an organization such as PREPARE.
