For many formerly incarcerated individuals, the challenges of reentry do not end once they walk out of prison.
Finding stable housing, employment, transportation, mental health support, and rebuilding confidence can become major obstacles while trying to start over after incarceration.
For Pamela Fort, helping people navigate those struggles through New Day Employment Network (NDEN) has become more than community work — it has become a calling.
“To whom much is given, much is required,” Fort said. “God gave me a ministry, and that ministry is really working with the justice-impacted population.”
Fort’s work in the community began years before the founding of NDEN through expungement clinics she organized across Joliet and Will County to help residents clear and seal criminal records.
“We started at Second Baptist Church, and then we moved it to St. John’s Church,” Fort said. “At that particular time, people just weren’t giving you space to have things because they didn’t understand it.”
Over time, Fort said the expungement work revealed a larger issue. Even after records were sealed or expunged, many people were still struggling to rebuild stability after returning home.
“The clients would tell us this was great. The expungement work was helping, but it couldn’t help everybody. They needed more,” Fort said.
That realization eventually led to the creation of New Day Employment Network, a Joliet-based grassroots organization focused on helping justice-impacted individuals through employment assistance, recovery support, mental health referrals, and outreach services throughout Joliet and Will County.
Part of that work includes New Day’s Essential Skills Academy, a reentry-focused program designed to help participants mentally and emotionally adjust to life after incarceration.
Donna Flowers, one of the program’s instructors, said the Essential Skills Academy focuses on helping participants rebuild mindset, confidence, and structure during reentry.
“You basically have to reeducate yourself on how to act as a free person,” Flowers said. “When you’re incarcerated, your time and your schedule are based on what they say and what they tell you to do. Now you’re on your own. You have to get used to thinking on your own.”
The program is divided into multiple sessions covering communication skills, overcoming obstacles, time management, decision-making, and life planning.
“We deal with the growth mindset, self-confidence, honesty, patience, logical thinking, goal setting, networking, and setting yourself up for success. You have to actually change everything, because you’ve been accustomed to protecting yourself. You’re in an environment where harm is in the way, and now you have to relearn how to function outside of that,” Flowers said.
New Day’s also offers recovery and mental health support through partnerships with community organizations and outreach coordinators with lived experience.
QuoVadis Nabors, who works in recovery services and collaborates with New Day, said many people dealing with addiction and trauma face similar struggles rebuilding confidence and stability after incarceration.
“People are broken,” Nabors said. “And it’s no different than being locked up in prison mentally when you’re dealing with addiction, because your mind is so focused on using drugs, getting drugs, and surviving.”
According to Nabors many people entering recovery environments have forgotten how to function in healthy settings after years of addiction, incarceration, or trauma.
“People forget how to live, how to be a productive member of society. So the information that we got to share is very empowering. It could definitely help them moving forward.”
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Nabors believes that partnering with New Day allows people with lived experience to help others navigate recovery and reentry.
“You know, collaborating with Ms. Fort and her team is a great effort because we have a lot to offer here. Helping people rebuild their confidence, getting jobs, and things of that nature, just coming back into society.”
After spending 28 years incarcerated, Katrina Harden said one of the hardest parts of reentry was trying to rebuild confidence while adjusting to life outside prison.
When she returned home, Harden worked jobs at Pizza Hut and a local Cleaners while attending culinary arts school, but she said the transition into society quickly became emotionally overwhelming.
“It took me back four steps,” Harden said, recalling losing one of those jobs. “At that time, I was so sad and disappointed because how was I going to continue culinary arts school if I couldn’t even keep a job?”
Harden said adapting to workplace environments after nearly three decades incarcerated was difficult, especially while trying to navigate new expectations and interactions outside prison walls.
“They used to holler at me and talk to me crazy,” Harden said. “I’m like, ‘You can’t be screaming at me. You can’t be hollering at me.’ I had already been through a lot.”
At one point, Harden felt emotionally defeated and unstable while trying to rebuild her life.
“I was basically living with somebody else,” Harden said. “To me, I felt like homelessness because I was treated as if I was not wanted there.”
Harden said things began changing after she connected with Pamela and her New Day Employment Network.
“It gave me the confidence to really just be okay with being honest and letting people know, yeah, I was formerly incarcerated,” Harden said. “And to be comfortable with the fact that some people will hire me and some people won’t, no matter how much education or certificates I have.”
Today, Harden volunteers with the Justice Alliance and assists with outreach efforts throughout the community, using her own experiences to encourage other formerly incarcerated individuals navigating reentry.
Harden said becoming involved with the Justice Alliance also became part of her healing process after incarceration and past trauma.
“I’ve been through abuse. I’ve been through a lot of different things, and now I’m just trying to heal from those situations,” Harden said. “I’m trying to help other formerly incarcerated women get beyond their past, and show that we can be successful.”
The Justice Alliance, created through New Day Employment Network, is a coalition of organizations and community members focused on supporting formerly incarcerated individuals as they navigate reentry and recovery.
For Fort, the Justice Alliance was needed after realizing that many organizations serving justice-impacted individuals throughout Joliet and Will County were often working separately rather than collaboratively.
“Everybody was working in silos,” Fort said. “You can’t get anything done that way. So I decided to bring organizations together around people working with justice-impacted individuals. Now people can come to us because we have that network, and that’s exactly what we wanted.”
Fort said the coalition brings together organizations, recovery programs, outreach workers, and community advocates who all provide different forms of support for formerly incarcerated individuals throughout the community.
Through the Justice Alliance, individuals can be connected with employment assistance, recovery programs, mental health resources, housing support, and other community-based services through a shared network of organizations and outreach workers.
Today, people like Harden have become part of that outreach, using their own lived experiences to help others navigate reentry and recovery throughout the community.
“My role here is that I come in with lived experience. I come in with my story. I come in and help with different things that we do because I want people to know we can be successful.”
For Fort, the work is bigger than programs or referrals. She said it is ultimately about giving people the opportunity to rebuild their lives after incarceration.
“Most of the people that I speak with, they’re intelligent people. And that’s the one thing people forget —that they’re human beings.”
“If the community can understand one thing about second chances, it would be to give it. Show some mercy and some grace, because somebody had to give it to you.”
For information on New Day Employment Network
