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By Isabella Scopetski, Justice and Legal Thought College Park Scholar
As an intern, I have been working on a social media campaign that focuses on telling the stories of the lives of incarcerated people and through this, building a wider base of donors to this cause.
I am working as an intern at the Lionheart Foundation which is a non-profit in Boston, MA that creates and distributes resources that focus on healing for incarcerated and at-risk youth and adults across the country. We provide work-book style materials to organizations that work with in-mates or former-inmates through the healing process that occurs when people have to face the traumas and hardships that were created by their imprisonment. These groups use our resources to build programs that support at-risk people in their post-prison endeavors as they are re-integrated into society. As an intern, I have been working on a social media campaign that focuses on telling the stories of the lives of incarcerated people and through this, building a wider base of donors to this cause. I have been learning how to think about the function of social media, our audience, and how we can reach our target audience online. My role has been to research other organizations that are doing similar work to us, and to take screenshots and detailed notes about what they have done with their platforms to reach the most people.
The Lionheart Foundation is intertwined with social movements that are gaining a lot of attention this year, such as Black Lives Matter and other police violence reform and prison reform campaigns that are finally being recognized by lawmakers. This connection to social justice has made me broaden the scope of content that we want to post to cater towards people who already have a vested interest in these social movements. Understanding the ways in which people can condition and heal their own mind, to a certain extent, within the harsh conditions of prisons, has been vital to cultivating an urgency behind my work that I hope to continue to carry out. Working on social media campaigns and gathering information from other sources has given me a wider breadth of knowledge that I hope to use in favor of these efforts. Through our efforts with launching new social media platforms for this nonprofit organization, we want to get the message across that people are victims of incarceration even if they themselves have committed crimes. We also want to use our platform to humanize this population of people suffering at the hands of a vicious system. Mindfulness has become a widespread practice in the western hemisphere over the past decade and as more people receive the benefits of mindfulness, more people are going to be inclined to empathize with prisoners and understand their vital need for healing.
Hey Isabella! I love the wide-reaching impact your internship has and that you were able to work with the non-profit despite being in a different state. I had no idea that non-profits like this exist. It is incredibly helpful since the prison system is so large in our country. What was it like to conduct this internship virtually?
Hi Isabella!!
This internship is so cool, and I enjoyed reading about your experience because I'm learning about the prison system in my corrections class! I think its amazing that this organization is trying to target and heal trauma from the prison experience for inmates, and I learned that its very interconnected with some of the well-known groups fighting for racial justice such as BLM. Do you feel you've made a direct impact on specific inmates with your work?
Hey Isabella,
Hey Isabella, I was drawn to your poster because I have never heard about the Lionheart Foundation and it sounded interesting. I learned that the lionheart foundation is a non-profit organization that heals and provides resources to youth and at risk adults. Also that you helped a great amount of people to reintegrate back into society. My question is if you given the opportunity to again intern at the Lionheart Foundation, would you do it?
Hi Isabella, your work at Lionheart is super interesting. I have a question: what has been the most impact you've seen from this work? Do you have any feedback from the people that you work with?
Hi Isabella, what stood out to me from your poster was the purpose, and mission that Lionhart has with the inmates and at-risk youth, and adults. I believe from what I've learned is that the work you do plays an important role in how Lionheart can provide the needed resources so the inmates and at-risk youth can have more opportunities more growth and also, at the intended mission for reintegration into society. What kinds of skills do you think you've gained from your internship experience and how would those relate to the goal of advancing social justice in your future opportunities?