Who we are: Abundant Place has existed for almost two decades. Throughout these years the Founder, Deanna Allen, along with hundreds of volunteers nationwide have been reaching inside of prisons, jails juvenile halls and communities who want to better serve them when they come home. We are simply passionate people in recovery from trauma, substance abuse, mental health issues, domestic violence, homelessness and more. Our army of responders is made up of the incarcerated, previously incarcerated, pastors, teachers, policymakers, counselors, law enforcement, authors and many more. In a nutshell, we are people who love to see lives transformed and generations impacted!
What we do: What we do has greatly evolved over these almost two decades. It started out as a simple thing. GO! Go, share the experience, strength and hope that we have. Share that life doesn’t have to be an EMPTY place of mere existence; it truly can be radically transformed into an ABUNDANT PLACE! Over the years we’ve faithfully invested in the lives of hundreds of thousands. Our awareness of the vast and dire needs grew through the stories of each person who touched our life. And so, what we offered grew and expanded too. The Founder went from having authored one book to four with several more projects in the works. The opportunities expanded from sharing testimonies of our changed lives to teaching seminars on how we got from there (brokenness) to here (wholeness). Local, Regional, State, National – the invites kept coming. The broken kept crying out and the community members, service providers and Correctional Partners kept asking for help. We were no longer able to sit and watch the message of hope we had shared inside disappear when the people we were reaching had to come home…… with nothing! So – we started doing inside and outside work with an even stronger outside component. This is what today is commonly called A Reentry Initiative. This is how Abundant Place became a community development organization.
How we do it: How we do it depends on what we are doing. Inside detention facilities and through contracted efforts we are facilitating evidence based, gender specific, trauma informed classes and seminars. We are performing assessments and writing individual reentry plans that match the specific risks and needs of those coming home. We are hosting and partnering with communities and states to increase community awareness and expand public and private partnerships. We are building strong collaborations so the weight of the overflowing net isn’t being held up by any one organization or entity. We have done television and radio shows, Reentry Conferences, Community Trainings, and worked with County, State and Federal leaders in understanding how to better integrate the community so our community member has a chance at success.
Where we go: We go wherever we are invited! We go where we are needed! We go where there is opportunity to help communities strengthen their response to incarceration, rehabilitation and reentry. We go where strong partnerships can be forged. We go where the hope is needed!