Underground Ministries

Underground Ministries clarified all our existing operations and energies into three program categories: 1) direct reentry: our local, ongoing work of prison-reentry relationship and accompaniment amoung gang-affected men and women releasing to skagit county and surrounding counties continued to grow. Not only to serve more individuals, but our formerly incarcerated reentry navigators developed greater partnerships with employers, community college, laser tatto removal, department of corrections probation offices, recovery housing and even state representatives. One navagtor founded a gang youth intervention group, our journey, to extend our reentry reach to youth who have been pushed out of the high schools and into the streets' gang recruitment. Direct reentry also gained significant funding from the wa department of commerce to extend greater digital navigation, technological support, basic needs and workplaces readiness for those we serve.

Additional programs not listed previously: 2) one parish one prisoner: this program takes our local reentry practices and mobilizes churches around wa state to practice them with just one person released from prison into their community, over two years. Our opop director of operations expanded our program from 20 "parish teams" to 40 this year. And we completed a significant video interview series to enrich all 24 monthly learning modules with a variety of personal testimonials from our participants. Part of our state contracts contributed to staffing to expand parish recruitment in church networks and build our platform in conference circuits. 3) movement building: our mission to cast vision beyond just our two programs, while also investing in our database and back-end communications, invested in a new backend software for recurring donations, donor, and volunteer tracking, integrated with our newsletters communications. Our newsletter and social media will now deploy more of our original video material, in tandem, both resourcing the wider network out there while inspiring more donors to give and invest in our work.