in 1994 Rwanda was devastated over
200,000 people were killed slaughtered
in a genocide over 500,000 women it’s
estimated were raped women and young
girls it destroyed the country they were
on the verge of collapse
international organizations began to
invest in Rwanda but they invested in a
very special way they invested in women
they started a lot of small micro
enterprise businesses they found out
what the women were good at the skills
they had and they invested in them and
for the first time in those women’s lies
they had a place at the table they had a
financial stake in their community it
was an amazing transformation and for
that country it began way back today in
2017 Rwanda despite being still poor is
one of the fastest growing economies in
all of Africa the women didn’t just stop
with the micro businesses once they got
the sense of control over their own
lives they began to step into new arenas
and what you see is that today in Rwanda
a very large percent 64% of the
Parliament in Rwanda is made up of women
compare that to our country where 19
percent of women are represented in
Congress it’s a really tough thing to
think about the fact that women have
such little power when we look at what’s
happened to women across our country we
think about the fact that women behind
bars today in our country the 60% of
them
60% of them have women at home under the
age of 18 we also think about the fact
that in the last few years since 1980
our country has increased the number of
people who are incarcerated women
incarcerated by over 700 percent so in
1980 we had a little over 26,000 women
incarcerated in the United States but
today we have over 215,000 women behind
bars in some ways when I think about
Rwanda and I think about the
incarceration of women and men in our
country because I didn’t even add into
that the equation of all of the men that
we incarcerate we are the largest
incarcerate er of people on the face of
the earth so when you think about Rwanda
and the devastation that happened there
to their people I can flip that around
and think about the prison industry and
what that’s doing in our country to many
of our communities to our people of
color to the poor because when we
incarcerate them we set them up for
another failure within three years of
release from prison in our country over
50 percent are back in the criminal
justice system in one way or the other
and people begin to no longer believe in
themselves their community no longer
believes in them it creates that whole
idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy when
I don’t feel good about myself I do
things that I shouldn’t do research
tells us that for us to believe in
ourselves and to do good things in life
we have to hear good messages we have to
have people tell us that we’re
worthwhile that we’re important that
we’re valued that we’re special unless
we hear those messages it’s really
really hard for us to change our lives
we all know how difficult changes in
2012 a group of us got together we
created a program
that we called labyrinth we called it
that because we saw a labyrinth as a
journey a journey to begin to heal for
the women in our community who we began
to listen to our most vulnerable our
least employable women so we started
labyrinth labyrinth does a lot of we
have a lot of tools that we use at
labyrinth it’s a very small program that
started out with a half-time social
worker and no other staff but we began a
journey to try to find a way to help
these women heal so what we did was we
reached out to two organizations around
the country who have been working with
the same population one in Denver and
one in Nashville Tennessee and they’ve
mentored us this entire journey they
taught us what tools we needed to use in
order to reach the women in order to
connect with their spirit in order to
plant the seeds for for growth to occur
one of the things that we do is we have
a lot of art experiences we have so many
artists in our community who willingly
give over their time and they come in
and they meet with the women and they
teach them new art experiences and art
isn’t just for art’s sake art is a way
to connect with who we are at our core
it’s an opportunity for us to feel good
about what we’ve accomplished and in
this particular quilt was done by a
group of women around our table at
labyrinths and each of the women were
encouraged to take a piece of fabric cut
it all up and create a block and that
block is what you see it represents
about 10 women up there but in the
process of creating that block they were
asked to tell their story
they were asked to use colors and shapes
and designs and words if they wanted to
tell the story of their hope their loss
their love their dreams and as they did
that they began to share with all the
other women in the room and they began
to share the pain that they had been
through they talked about their
incarceration and what they found was
that for the first time maybe for some
of them that other people listened and
cared and then when this quilt was
finished they were so proud
they were so excited about what they had
accomplished and everyone told them what
beauty they had created and for them
they could see that they had some beauty
inside themselves as well this house
that you see was one of two properties
that we were helped to buy in this
community and we were helped to create
it what these were distressed properties
these were condemned these were a mess
and over time volunteers came from all
walks of life church groups youth groups
students many many students the building
trades all the laborers they all came
and they all helped us gut these
buildings and rebuild which is sort of
the motto for what we’re trying to do
with the women take away the pain and
help them to rebuild a cute Side Story
on that as as we would work on the
houses the weather was often really nice
would be outside people would come by
and give us a thumbs up on the color or
thumbs down on something we had done one
woman I will never ever forget walk by
one day and she said I used to be
ashamed to tell people I lived on this
side of town but seeing what you all
were doing here for these women
I’m proud so our journey of changing
these two properties also helped to
begin to reinvigorate that neighborhood
the women had an opportunity something
that many of us probably have never done
they certainly never had was to walk in
the Labor Day Parade carrying this
enormous banner for all to see because
they wanted the opportunity to tell
everyone thinks they wanted to say to
the building trades thank you so much
for helping us they wanted to say to the
students to the church groups to all the
volunteers who came thank you for making
this a possibility for us a place where
we can go to heal a place where we can
go to study to talk and gain support and
also a place where many of us can live
we had one story that I wanted to share
in particular we are women tend to not
have very good education as often times
and then they come out from prison and
there’s very little that they can do
because women’s jobs are often in the
often in the fields that sometimes their
felony makes them impossible to be
employed in so we have a class where
we’ve run a 12-week class and expose
them to the building trades because the
building for a trades they don’t really
care if you have a felony as long as
you’re there and work and putting your
time and are responsible they will hire
you so we exposed them to the women
electricians women plumbers women’s
sheet metal workers so at the end of
that 12 weeks we thought it was really
important to have a party a celebration
a graduation we called it and at that
graduation we an add the women invite
their friends and their family members
come in for this party we are going to
celebrate we asked each woman to put on
a cap and gown and we took their picture
and to the woman we heard the story
I’ve never graduated from anything in my
life
I’ve never even maybe completed anything
I did this this little framed photo of
them and a cap and gown is sitting on
their dresser I’m sure at home and it’s
a constant a daily reminder that they
can complete something that they can be
successful so when I talked about the
quilt earlier I talked about the woman’s
story what I want to tell you now about
this quilt is that it’s almost done for
labyrinth we’ve been guided by these two
wonderful programs and we have one more
piece of this quote we need to put
together that I’ll talk about but if you
think of this quilt in each of the
blocks think about it as each piece that
we’ve added over the last few years to
reach out to these women we have a lot
of art experiences photography
journaling crafts certainly quilt making
we also have a job coach now that’s one
of the blocks of this quilt a job coach
who works with the women who works with
not just the women but the employers and
tries to help set up a stage
these women can be successful because
many of our women have not had good
success in their jobs we need to have a
transition into the work world for them
so the job coach does that she meets
with the employer she meets with the
women let me tell you a story of a woman
I’m gonna call Sarah and Sarah was one
of the women that had worked with our
job coach she she’d had a good job
before she went to prison she got into
trouble with drugs and alcohol she went
off to prison and she came back and the
job coach was trying to help her find
another good job but success was not to
be hers she got rejection she got that
word know over and over and over again
and the job coach was beginning to worry
because all of us know that when we hear
that word over and over again we begin
to slip ourselves we begin to start
believe not believing in ourselves any
longer but Sarah decided that when she
went on for the next job interview she
was gonna take control of her life she
went out she met with the employer and
she said to that employer this is my
story this was my incarceration this is
my addiction and but this is my recovery
and I promise you that if you will hire
me I will be the most motivated
dedicated genuine employee you’ve ever
had it worked and that employer hired
her and she is a very successful
employee to this day so we have all
these programs we have a mentorship
program where each woman over time our
goal is for each woman to have her own
mentor kind of like a big sister kind of
like a best friend somebody that they
can meet with and talk with and share
their stories with there’s one piece of
the puzzle that’s still missing one
piece of the quilt and that quilt will
be complete when we launch our next
piece that next piece is our own micro
business much like the women of Rwanda
we need this opportunity we need to wait
have a way
to employ our least employable women are
most vulnerable women until they’re
ready to move out into the the community
we’re calling it with the help of a
graduate student because they are
wonderful they came up with the name why
don’t you just call it the clean slate
project so the clean slate project is
getting close to launching and it will
employ those women who for a time need
to be in a sheltered environment while
they’re still getting counseling while
they’re still meeting with their
probation of probation officer while
they’re still having to go and do urine
drops they will have a place where they
can come back every day and work and
that project will complete the entire
quilt we plan to follow in the steps of
these two other programs instead of
having a recidivism rate of 50% of our
women returning to the court systems
within three years we’re gonna be like
our our role models we’re gonna have
that down under 10% that’s our goal and
this last piece will help us get there
we we being a lot of volunteers decided
that it’s really not a good thing to
have a full-time agency with all this
going on run by a bunch of volunteers so
our program merged last July with the
YWCA because it has the same mission to
empower women it has the same mission
for social justice and so now our
program is a part of their program and
it’s overseen and it’s in a very safe
and wonderful place
our volunteers planted the seed in the
ground and now this program is growing
it so I think to wrap it up here think
about national devastation in Rwanda and
what that does to a country to a people
to a culture think about what the
personal devastation happens to an
individual who’s been raped assaulted
abused that’s the story of most of our
women
we need to find a way to reach into
their spirit we need to find a way to
nourish that seed and that’s what
labyrinth is all about and the quote
that’s there at the bottom is the one
that we sort of feel is part of who we
are we believe the women when we come
when they come to us have forgotten who
they are but we believe that they have
come to us so that we can help them
remember and heal thank you very much
[Applause]
200,000 people were killed slaughtered
in a genocide over 500,000 women it’s
estimated were raped women and young
girls it destroyed the country they were
on the verge of collapse
international organizations began to
invest in Rwanda but they invested in a
very special way they invested in women
they started a lot of small micro
enterprise businesses they found out
what the women were good at the skills
they had and they invested in them and
for the first time in those women’s lies
they had a place at the table they had a
financial stake in their community it
was an amazing transformation and for
that country it began way back today in
2017 Rwanda despite being still poor is
one of the fastest growing economies in
all of Africa the women didn’t just stop
with the micro businesses once they got
the sense of control over their own
lives they began to step into new arenas
and what you see is that today in Rwanda
a very large percent 64% of the
Parliament in Rwanda is made up of women
compare that to our country where 19
percent of women are represented in
Congress it’s a really tough thing to
think about the fact that women have
such little power when we look at what’s
happened to women across our country we
think about the fact that women behind
bars today in our country the 60% of
them
60% of them have women at home under the
age of 18 we also think about the fact
that in the last few years since 1980
our country has increased the number of
people who are incarcerated women
incarcerated by over 700 percent so in
1980 we had a little over 26,000 women
incarcerated in the United States but
today we have over 215,000 women behind
bars in some ways when I think about
Rwanda and I think about the
incarceration of women and men in our
country because I didn’t even add into
that the equation of all of the men that
we incarcerate we are the largest
incarcerate er of people on the face of
the earth so when you think about Rwanda
and the devastation that happened there
to their people I can flip that around
and think about the prison industry and
what that’s doing in our country to many
of our communities to our people of
color to the poor because when we
incarcerate them we set them up for
another failure within three years of
release from prison in our country over
50 percent are back in the criminal
justice system in one way or the other
and people begin to no longer believe in
themselves their community no longer
believes in them it creates that whole
idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy when
I don’t feel good about myself I do
things that I shouldn’t do research
tells us that for us to believe in
ourselves and to do good things in life
we have to hear good messages we have to
have people tell us that we’re
worthwhile that we’re important that
we’re valued that we’re special unless
we hear those messages it’s really
really hard for us to change our lives
we all know how difficult changes in
2012 a group of us got together we
created a program
that we called labyrinth we called it
that because we saw a labyrinth as a
journey a journey to begin to heal for
the women in our community who we began
to listen to our most vulnerable our
least employable women so we started
labyrinth labyrinth does a lot of we
have a lot of tools that we use at
labyrinth it’s a very small program that
started out with a half-time social
worker and no other staff but we began a
journey to try to find a way to help
these women heal so what we did was we
reached out to two organizations around
the country who have been working with
the same population one in Denver and
one in Nashville Tennessee and they’ve
mentored us this entire journey they
taught us what tools we needed to use in
order to reach the women in order to
connect with their spirit in order to
plant the seeds for for growth to occur
one of the things that we do is we have
a lot of art experiences we have so many
artists in our community who willingly
give over their time and they come in
and they meet with the women and they
teach them new art experiences and art
isn’t just for art’s sake art is a way
to connect with who we are at our core
it’s an opportunity for us to feel good
about what we’ve accomplished and in
this particular quilt was done by a
group of women around our table at
labyrinths and each of the women were
encouraged to take a piece of fabric cut
it all up and create a block and that
block is what you see it represents
about 10 women up there but in the
process of creating that block they were
asked to tell their story
they were asked to use colors and shapes
and designs and words if they wanted to
tell the story of their hope their loss
their love their dreams and as they did
that they began to share with all the
other women in the room and they began
to share the pain that they had been
through they talked about their
incarceration and what they found was
that for the first time maybe for some
of them that other people listened and
cared and then when this quilt was
finished they were so proud
they were so excited about what they had
accomplished and everyone told them what
beauty they had created and for them
they could see that they had some beauty
inside themselves as well this house
that you see was one of two properties
that we were helped to buy in this
community and we were helped to create
it what these were distressed properties
these were condemned these were a mess
and over time volunteers came from all
walks of life church groups youth groups
students many many students the building
trades all the laborers they all came
and they all helped us gut these
buildings and rebuild which is sort of
the motto for what we’re trying to do
with the women take away the pain and
help them to rebuild a cute Side Story
on that as as we would work on the
houses the weather was often really nice
would be outside people would come by
and give us a thumbs up on the color or
thumbs down on something we had done one
woman I will never ever forget walk by
one day and she said I used to be
ashamed to tell people I lived on this
side of town but seeing what you all
were doing here for these women
I’m proud so our journey of changing
these two properties also helped to
begin to reinvigorate that neighborhood
the women had an opportunity something
that many of us probably have never done
they certainly never had was to walk in
the Labor Day Parade carrying this
enormous banner for all to see because
they wanted the opportunity to tell
everyone thinks they wanted to say to
the building trades thank you so much
for helping us they wanted to say to the
students to the church groups to all the
volunteers who came thank you for making
this a possibility for us a place where
we can go to heal a place where we can
go to study to talk and gain support and
also a place where many of us can live
we had one story that I wanted to share
in particular we are women tend to not
have very good education as often times
and then they come out from prison and
there’s very little that they can do
because women’s jobs are often in the
often in the fields that sometimes their
felony makes them impossible to be
employed in so we have a class where
we’ve run a 12-week class and expose
them to the building trades because the
building for a trades they don’t really
care if you have a felony as long as
you’re there and work and putting your
time and are responsible they will hire
you so we exposed them to the women
electricians women plumbers women’s
sheet metal workers so at the end of
that 12 weeks we thought it was really
important to have a party a celebration
a graduation we called it and at that
graduation we an add the women invite
their friends and their family members
come in for this party we are going to
celebrate we asked each woman to put on
a cap and gown and we took their picture
and to the woman we heard the story
I’ve never graduated from anything in my
life
I’ve never even maybe completed anything
I did this this little framed photo of
them and a cap and gown is sitting on
their dresser I’m sure at home and it’s
a constant a daily reminder that they
can complete something that they can be
successful so when I talked about the
quilt earlier I talked about the woman’s
story what I want to tell you now about
this quilt is that it’s almost done for
labyrinth we’ve been guided by these two
wonderful programs and we have one more
piece of this quote we need to put
together that I’ll talk about but if you
think of this quilt in each of the
blocks think about it as each piece that
we’ve added over the last few years to
reach out to these women we have a lot
of art experiences photography
journaling crafts certainly quilt making
we also have a job coach now that’s one
of the blocks of this quilt a job coach
who works with the women who works with
not just the women but the employers and
tries to help set up a stage
these women can be successful because
many of our women have not had good
success in their jobs we need to have a
transition into the work world for them
so the job coach does that she meets
with the employer she meets with the
women let me tell you a story of a woman
I’m gonna call Sarah and Sarah was one
of the women that had worked with our
job coach she she’d had a good job
before she went to prison she got into
trouble with drugs and alcohol she went
off to prison and she came back and the
job coach was trying to help her find
another good job but success was not to
be hers she got rejection she got that
word know over and over and over again
and the job coach was beginning to worry
because all of us know that when we hear
that word over and over again we begin
to slip ourselves we begin to start
believe not believing in ourselves any
longer but Sarah decided that when she
went on for the next job interview she
was gonna take control of her life she
went out she met with the employer and
she said to that employer this is my
story this was my incarceration this is
my addiction and but this is my recovery
and I promise you that if you will hire
me I will be the most motivated
dedicated genuine employee you’ve ever
had it worked and that employer hired
her and she is a very successful
employee to this day so we have all
these programs we have a mentorship
program where each woman over time our
goal is for each woman to have her own
mentor kind of like a big sister kind of
like a best friend somebody that they
can meet with and talk with and share
their stories with there’s one piece of
the puzzle that’s still missing one
piece of the quilt and that quilt will
be complete when we launch our next
piece that next piece is our own micro
business much like the women of Rwanda
we need this opportunity we need to wait
have a way
to employ our least employable women are
most vulnerable women until they’re
ready to move out into the the community
we’re calling it with the help of a
graduate student because they are
wonderful they came up with the name why
don’t you just call it the clean slate
project so the clean slate project is
getting close to launching and it will
employ those women who for a time need
to be in a sheltered environment while
they’re still getting counseling while
they’re still meeting with their
probation of probation officer while
they’re still having to go and do urine
drops they will have a place where they
can come back every day and work and
that project will complete the entire
quilt we plan to follow in the steps of
these two other programs instead of
having a recidivism rate of 50% of our
women returning to the court systems
within three years we’re gonna be like
our our role models we’re gonna have
that down under 10% that’s our goal and
this last piece will help us get there
we we being a lot of volunteers decided
that it’s really not a good thing to
have a full-time agency with all this
going on run by a bunch of volunteers so
our program merged last July with the
YWCA because it has the same mission to
empower women it has the same mission
for social justice and so now our
program is a part of their program and
it’s overseen and it’s in a very safe
and wonderful place
our volunteers planted the seed in the
ground and now this program is growing
it so I think to wrap it up here think
about national devastation in Rwanda and
what that does to a country to a people
to a culture think about what the
personal devastation happens to an
individual who’s been raped assaulted
abused that’s the story of most of our
women
we need to find a way to reach into
their spirit we need to find a way to
nourish that seed and that’s what
labyrinth is all about and the quote
that’s there at the bottom is the one
that we sort of feel is part of who we
are we believe the women when we come
when they come to us have forgotten who
they are but we believe that they have
come to us so that we can help them
remember and heal thank you very much
[Applause]
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