A Manual
Healed prisoners: a beacon to others
While most prisoners are deprived from effective rehabilitative programs, they all have access to books. So we donate a book. A transformative book to elevate one’s consciousness. A book that allows men to do their soul work independently or in small groups in their dormitories and cells.
A powerful in-depth manual
Leonard Scoven’s Holistic Justice & the Path to Higher Ground is a proven manual for prisoners to heal trauma. Once healed, they’re a light that shines in prison community. The manual has the power to transform lives one at a time.
Our first goal
To donate the manual to 500 incarcerated men throughout the US. We can only do so with your help!
Victim Group Meetings
Guidance
Those who have survived serious harm from crime have many needs. We can provide guidance on their journey through the criminal justice system and referral to professional services if needed. We have welcomed hundreds of people over the years with many different stories: homicide, battery, sexual assault, family violence; all different but with commonalities in pain experience.
Small groups
Meetings usually last about one hour long and and form a continuing series with no commitment from participants. Right now our monthly meetings are cancelled.
A Reentry House
Recidivism
People in prison and those coming out are a class of severely traumatized people. Their unaddressed, unhealed trauma will more likely lead them to traumatize more people, commit new crimes and return to prison.
AHGNES’House
Achieve Higher Ground is planning to open AHGNES’ House in 2023, a reentry house located in Tallahassee that will address the trauma of formerly incarcerated people and assist them in successfully returning to society. With AHGNES’ House we diminish the reentry barrier by offering residential trauma healing and work experience.
Events
This May we organize a first event with some great speakers on the impact of trauma on recidivism, the healing power of Restorative Justice and a Tallahassee reentry program in jail initiated by the sheriff. Read more here.
Victim Offender Dialogue
Restorative Justice
Part of AHGNES’ House program will be preparations for victim offender dialogues. We strongly believe that understanding may lead to forgiveness. And (self)forgiveness in its turn contributes to healing trauma.
True change: Holistic Justice
Though it seems weak to be concerned with the emotions of someone who has committed a crime, it is foolish to ignore them when a refusal to acknowledge and deal with them, results in continued dysfunction.
In American prisons, many of those convicted miss out on the possibility of healing and rehabilitation. We consider healing of all the people wounded by crime a neccessity for true change in both the criminal justice system and our communities.
When Scovens had been seriously thwarted in teaching this healing work in groups on the inside some years back, he first felt quite disheartened.
After some time he thought of another way to get his healing message across to those who need it most… by means of the website you are now looking at!
He rewrote the workshop manual as to serve its new purpose – leading the individual inside themselves.
For change always comes from within.
Agnes Furey has been working closely together with Scovens on this project until her recent, unexpected passing away on August 22, 2021. Their cooperational roots lay in Restorative Justice. While Agnes made herself a strong advocate for Restorative Justice in society, Leonard had set up seminars ‘inside’.
Wildflowers in the Median, their co-authored book, has moved lots of people all over the world. The Holistic Justice and Path to Higher Ground manual aims to do the same behind bars.
Do you want to support us?
Besides a straight donation, we offer a possibility to receive a gift in return for your support ~
Check the giftshop page to see how it works!
Choose right here from our giftshop:
