Your gifts, both large and small, will help us to achieve our mission of helping those affected by our cause.
Your gift will help Dismas provide a safe and supportive home for individuals who are working to rebuild their lives and their relationships with friends, families, and neighbors after incarceration. Thank you in advance for your generous support. Dismas depends on its donors and volunteer support to maintain our mission. Since 1986, we have been dedicated to helping individuals who have been through the corrections system readjust to society once again.
The Dismas community is a village comprised of people from all walks of life and many corners of the world; Volunteers for Peace has enriched this little kaleidoscope of ours for decades.
As an organization, Volunteers for Peace has a rich and long-standing history going back to the late 1960s when Peter Coldwell, Founder of Volunteers For Peace, participated in international short-term voluntary service projects in Hungary and Czechoslovakia through a program sponsored by the Unitarian-Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) in Boston. The value of working on a shared project, helping a community, and forming ties with other volunteers, coupled with his frustrations with the state of the world, motivated him to create an American international voluntary service organization.
I became addicted to painkillers at the age of 23, and it pretty much went downhill slowly from there. Over the years, I started to decline a little every year. Until I ended up in prison in NH and VT. I have 2 daughters named Addison and Avery and they mean the world to me. Since being out of prison, I have been able to reconnect with them thanks to the help of Dismas. I have been able to see my daughters go to the first day of 2nd grade and the first day of kindergarten. Without Dismas giving me this chance, I would have never been able to see their first days of school if I was still inside a southern state prison. So I am very grateful for this opportunity.
Click on the blog title to read his entire speech.
