Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
From inmates to entrepreneurs: How work transforms the soul and spirit
From inmates to entrepreneurs: How work transforms the soul and spirit
Jul 1, 2025 8:55 PM

James, Gene and Dexter at Refoundry

With the promising (but now passing) prospect of a new wave of criminal justice reform circulating around Capitol Hill, discussions have reemerged as to how we might improve the justice system to better help and support our prison population (current and former) in rehabilitating their lives and avoiding the status quo of systematic detours.

Meanwhile, at a cultural and institutional level, we continue to new ways of helping individuals better recognize their gifts and learn to leverage their hearts and hands toward contribution and collaboration (e.g. 1,2,3). We needn’t wait for the levers of policy to highlight the inherent dignity and potential of our neighbors and connect that revelation to meaningful work and relationships.

At Refoundry, a Brooklyn-based non-profit focused on rehabilitation, we see these e alive in the lives of former prisoners. Focused primarily on training and education, Refoundry “trains formerly incarcerated people to repurpose discarded materials into home furnishings and mentors them into their own business and/or career path,” acting as an entrepreneurship incubator of sorts.

“They’re working with discarded materials, and they often feel discarded both by society and by themselves,” Thomas Safian, co-founder of Refoundry. “When they’re giving new value to this discarded material, also fell like they’re giving new value to their own lives. Then when they take what they’ve made and send it out into the world, it makes our participants feel seen, valued, and a part of society in a way they just haven’t had those opportunity points before.”

In the following film, we see this empowerment on full display through basic economic activity, as former inmates and current business owners James L. Eleby and Gene Manigoexplain their personal transformations.

As another example, consider the story ofRalphy Dominguez, a former drug dealer who—through mentorship with Refoundry—started and now runs Pen & Pistol, a business that creates a range of leather accessories.

“That hustle was there, that spirit, that thirst for entrepreneurship is there,” says Dominguez. “And I ing from a place where we had nothing and we can only gain—this is really what motivates ing home from prison.”

In each case, and through each personal testimony, we see so much passion and potential—so much capacity for provision, creative service, and contribution. Ultimately, though, this isn’t just about getting people to a decent paycheck or offering them a life of economic peace and stability. It’s about authentic, whole-life rehabilitation—spiritually, socially, and otherwise.

By pursuing work in a needed skill and growing in their understanding of business—by orienting hearts and hands towardservice to othersand thus to God—these former inmates are entering into a transformative, collaborative exchange that willshape their very souls and spirits. Material provision is just thebyproduct.

In situations like these, the self-evident truths about human dignity shine a bit more clearly given mon cultural distortions that so often surround the subjects. But in celebrating such redemption, we shouldn’t forget that the same underlying realities and lessons apply to the rest of us, whatever our station or situation in the economic order. If we are putting our hand to the plow in the service of our neighbors, we, too, are experiencing that redemption each and every day, whether it feels like it or not.

As we continue to expand our economic imaginations and pursue vocational clarity, these business owners offer a powerfulexample on how all of us ought to view and approach such work, not taking the personal transformation and social/spiritual side effects for granted.

“People are people,” says Safian in the film. ing out of prison have the same talents and skills as most everybody in our society has. They really just have to have ambition, aspiration, and a sense of where they want to go in their life.”

Image: Christina Maida / Refoundry, used with permission

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Delta regions of the world, unite!
The current situation in New Orleans can be seen in part as a result of the circumstances and context of the city’s founding in 1718. According to one report, the French settled on the site for New Orleans in response to “the need to control the Mississippi River and its tributaries.” But in order for this to happen, the French “would need to control the mouth of the river in the delta at the Gulf of Mexico. The problem with...
The nose of a camel: The federal government and education
Federal involvement in education has grown steadily throughout the nation’s history, encroaching on what is still viewed by American’s as mostly a state and local responsibility. Kevin Schmiesing looks at a new book that examines U.S. education policy, the red tape and bureaucracy that has resulted, and the opposition to federal control that arose from parochial school administrators. Read the full text here. ...
Corporate faith
Two stats featured in this month’s Go Figure section of Christianity Today: 17: Percentage of the top 50 Fortune 500 corporations’ foundations whose policies prohibit their giving to faith-based groups. 57: Percentage of corporations that mention faith-based organizations and will not match employee contributions to them. ...
Homo Religiosus
An article by City University of New York professor Richard Wolin celebrates the legacy of Jürgen Habermas, who represents a shift from philosophers such as Marx and Nietzsche. “Among 19th-century thinkers it was an monplace that religion’s cultural centrality was a thing of the past,” but in the words of Habermas, “For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a...
Submerged subsidiarity
Because too much has already been said about the recent gulf hurricanes, I won’t put in my two cents. I will, however, direct the reader to the most insightful take on this situation that I have yet to stumble across. As you read it, think again about the importance of the definitions of the words we use, such as ‘responsibility’ and ‘authority’ as are discussed in the mentioned article. ...
Hurricane relief – Small organizations to the rescue
In the wake of overwhelming need of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thankfully a number of us are voicing irritation with the inquiry, “How important do you think that faith-based organizations are to helping people”? Before ANY organization — government agency of any kind or national nonprofit — made a move, faith organizations had already moved. In San Antonio, where several Russian students were among New Orleans evacuees, Victory Fellowship, a faith-based, privately funded substance abuse treatment program, simply did the...
Serenity now!
Why review a television show that pleted even its first season nearly three years ago? The confluence of events and circumstances that resulted in the cancellation of the Fox show Firefly in 2002 has done little to destroy the resiliency of the Firefly phenomenon. While only 14 episodes were ever made, and only 11 of those ever shown, once plete series of Firefly came out on DVD, it topped sales at Amazon for months (it’s currently ranked #7). Fans of...
Spendthrift republicans
A wonderful piece by Deroy Murdock today on NRO. Though most fiscal conservatives understandably vote Republican, the record substantiates the theory that spending is less responsible when Congress is dominated by one party—either party—than when each party has enough votes to frustrate the other. Others have drawn attention to the problem of Republican pork, but Murdock does so in an especially devastating way. ...
Let the market work
Check out this exchange, involving Tony Blankley from The Washington Times, Pat Buchanan of MSNBC, and Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, from last week’s McLaughlin Group about President Bush’s call for people to conserve gasoline in their daily activities: MR. BLANKLEY: Let me make a quick point. Free-market prices maintain equilibrium of supply and demand. Let the price go up. People will make individual decisions. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. MR. BLANKLEY: And they will cut back. They did when the prices went...
Tolerance: True and false
Pope Benedict XVI: “A tolerance which allows God as a private opinion but which excludes him from public life, from the reality of the world and our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy,” the pope said in the homily he gave at a three-week-long synod’s opening mass in St Peter’s Basilica. “When man makes himself the only master of the world and master of himself, justice cannot exist. Then, arbitrariness, power and interests rule.” ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved