By Ivan Kilgore, Founder, United Black Family Scholarship Foundation (UBFSF)

I landed on B-facility at CSP-Sac in 2011 with the kind of quiet dread you don’t
always admit out loud. It wasn’t just a housing move from C-yard to B-yard ; it felt like
a transfer from possibility to scarcity. C-facility had routines that made me feel
human—programs, familiar faces, a rhythm that hinted at progress. B-facility, by
contrast, carried a reputation that sat heavy on the air : a SHU “kickout yard,” where
men were dropped after years in solitary confinement and expected to “adjust” to
general population life with almost no programming to soften the transition.

The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to disappear there.

On C-facility, for six straight years, I had been a participant in a Creative Writing class that became my weekly lifeline. I didn’t understand at first how much that room mattered. I only knew that when prison does —isolated me, reduced me to a number, tried to make my emotions either a weakness or a liability— writing gave me a way to stay intact. It gave me a place to me more than my worst decision.

By Dennis Patillo

One opportunity to change would be to better one's skill at living on the right path and to manifest conflict resolution. It is an agreed upon point that we are stronger when we take away negative energy. We need to progress toward greater and fuller life values.

Individuals must be willing to do whatever work it takes to get the job done. Develop different styles based on life experiences, support those around you and make them feel important.

I realize that life sometimes gives you a second chance. Radical acceptance is key to handling all situations without confusion as I go on to be tested.

Developments

→ We had numerous University appearances this month. At Central Oklahoma University, our Program & Policy Coordinator, Elias and Volunteer & Services Coordinator, Beenish, met with students at a recruitment event. At Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York, our Media & Marketing Director, Isabella spoke with multiple undergraduate classes about our work at UBFSF.

→ Our Edovo course for the Nonprofit Coaching & Leadership Training program, currently has 23,000 users with 5,700 completions. You can view the completed Survery Report for phase one here: Survey Report

→ Ivan and Projectt Manager, Ian Wilson have met with a numerous schools regarding partnerships. We have emerging internship programs with UPenn, Brown, University of Arizona, Arizona State and University of Houston-Downtown. We have also met with Harvard, Columbia University, and UMiami, but those partnerships are still in development.

→ Georgetown University is actively planning our first in person pilot course in nonprofit management in the DC Central Detention Facility for this coming fall semester. This is through their Prisons and Justice Initiative in collaboration with Georgetown’s Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership.

→ Our team has begun development planning for a feature documentary, Writing Beyond the Prison, highlighting Ivan’s resilience and more than three decades of writing from prison.

→ We are in the final stages of launching the website for Voices on Death Row, a podcast featuring Executive Administrative Assistant Halima Kilgore in France and Borgela, a Haitian man on death row in Pennsylvania.

New Team Members

On April 22 and 27, our Media & Marketing Director, Isabella Cain gave presentations in two classes at Stony Brook University, Black Power Movement and Prison Memoir & History Research. Isabella explored the reality of writing while incarcerated, volunteer and internship opportunities, university partnerships, and censorship.

UBFSF Founder, Ivan Kilgore, was able to be patched in to the Prison Memoir class where he had a candid Q&A with students where he spoke about his life, career as a writer, and the impact that incarceration has on everyone’s lives. The students had previously had assignments where they analyzed Ivan’s memoir, Mayhem, Murder, and Magnificence (2020).

Until next time,

A Different Way of Doing Things