(E)nding (P)overty and (I)n(C)arceration

Topeka K. Sam founded and leads The Ladies of Hope Ministries; is president of TKS Ventures and Faces & Voices, Inc.; and serves on the board of directors for Grassroots Leadership, Coalition for Public Safety, and The Marshall Project.

Since her release from federal prison in 2015, Topeka has been a tireless advocate as a Columbia University 2015 Beyond the Bars Fellow and 2016 Justice-In-Education Scholar; 2017 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow; 2018 Unlocked Futures Cohort Member; 2018 Opportunity Agenda Communications Institute Fellow; Director of #DignityCampaign with #cut50; Senior Advisor to NYUJ, host of “The Topeka K. Sam Show” on SiriusXM; and TV/film producer with 44 Blue Productions. Topeka has been featured in/on Vogue, Essence, Vice, NY Times, TheCut, Rolling Stone, Variety, The Tamron Hall Show, CNN, MSNBC, and The Today Show. She was called “The Black Woman behind the video that led to the Trump Clemency of Alice Johnson.”

I am committed to ending poverty and incarceration of women and girls. Policing, jail, and mass incarceration are built on racism, sexual oppression, and violence and I am working to disrupt the well-worn path for women of color into jails and prisons. Through The Ladies of Hope Ministries and my related organizations, I work to create safe housing, reentry support, and advocacy programs that challenge the carceral state and end the over-incarceration and extreme sentencing of low-income women and girls. 

Our work has been a successful to date—100% of women who have enrolled at the Hope House residence have successfully reintegrated and none have returned to prison—but the scope is still limited compared to the size of the crisis. I will continue to build and develop an integrated reentry and alternatives to prison model while changing the narrative about women and girls caught up in the criminal justice system.

Since 1980, the rate of growth of women in prison in the USA has been twice as high as that of men, and there are currently 1.3 million women under supervision. Disparities by gender, race, and ethnicity result in far higher rates of incarceration for women and girls of color and the number of incarcerated women and girls has increased by more than 750%. Tough-on-crime policies, increasingly harsh drugs laws, and over-policing in Black and brown neighborhoods have decimated communities. Of the 225,000 women and girls incarcerated today, 80% are mothers and many were the breadwinners in their families. More than 90% of incarcerated women and girls have been the victims of sexual abuse. But we hear little about the sexual-assault-to-prison pipeline, and even less about the consequences of sending girls struggling with the after-effects of trauma into unsafe housing. Myriad fees, fines, and onerous supervision practices lock families into a cycle of poverty as they borrow money to post bail, pay fees, and struggle with the loss of a breadwinner. Even after people serve their time, they often face a maze of restrictions and unfair obstacles to finding employment or housing or meeting probation and parole demands. 

My project takes on the issue of poverty and incarceration of women and girls at its root and every point along its related branches. Through The LOHM, I address the variety of women’s service needs that range from basic survival such as safe shelter and food, employment and long-term sustainability in the community, and spiritual and existential needs. To that end, The LOHM has created three interrelated Core Mission Program Areas: 

Direct Services & Sustainability through Hope House and Angel Food Delivery Project 

Empowerment & Edification through Faces of Women Imprisoned and Pathways for Equity

Policy & Advocacy through EPIC Ambassadors, Parole and Probation Accountability Project, and Project ANEW

But even as we work to address the rippling effects of a broken system by building programs and services, my goal is far more ambitious--interrupting the forces of poverty and imprisonment and changing the narrative about women and girls of color. No longer must systemic, parental, or intimate-partner abuse lead to life of compounding small failures. In my vision, healing, learning, and access to resources will unleash a great creative and economic force. My public speaking, media, and narrative change work serves this essential purpose.

It is easy to say that our core users and most direct beneficiaries are the women and girls directly affected by the criminal justice system, but the benefits significantly redound to the public safety, community health, and economic growth of the communities we serve. It is no small part of my project to finally address the economic cost of our nation’s discriminatory and punitive practices. Policies grounded in racism, sexism, and hate have been a restraint on individual contribution, community wellbeing, and long-term economic productivity for far too long. Ultimately, our employment and entrepreneurship model will create significant economic opportunity and growth.

As you’ve seen, this project is conceived, built, and run by formerly incarcerated women and girls who come from communities most affected by the criminal justice system. They are women I first met while incarcerated and later welcomed home after she launched the Hope House residence in 2017. You need look no further than the LOHM's Faces of Women Imprisoned speakers bureau project (www.instagram.com/facesofwomenimprisoned/) or EPIC Ambassadors legislative advocacy network to see how these women are the foundation and structure of so much of this work. 

I first conceived of The Ladies of Hope Ministries while on the top of a prison bunk while serving a 3 year federal prison sentence. During that time, I saw how violence against women, sexual abuse, poverty, sexism, and racism create a toxic environment that propels the cycle of criminalization and incarceration for women. As I watched women self-medicate and use substances to escape, I—and the women around me—envisioned of a safe housing space for women coming home and a platform from which women could address the causes and consequences of incarceration.

After coming home in 2015, I created The LOHM and began to put the pieces in place for interrelated projects that could address the deep crisis of poverty and incarceration of women and girls. I received early support from Susan Burton and other formerly incarcerated women, but my network soon grew to include c-suite leadership at Fortune 500 companies and global not-for-profits.

I am passionate about this problem because I have witnessed how the intersection of racism and sexism at almost every point of our culture harms women and girls. And while this harm is all-to-apparent when seeing it played out in a jail or prison, its rippling impact has deep systemic consequences. Families are broken apart as mothers face long prison sentences far from home and children are faced with the stigma and trauma of parental separation. 

I believe that, in almost every case, there is a better, safer, and cheaper alternative to incarceration. I seek to develop, implement, and demonstrate the efficacy of those alternatives, change the narrative around women and girls in the criminal justice system, and create opportunities for people to thrive and live whole and fulfilling lives. 

As is clear from my vision to end poverty and incarceration for women and girls—my project is ambitious. It is neither hyperbolic or immoderate to say that I intend to transform the lives and experiences of women and girls across the world. At every step from the founding of The LOHM, I have demonstrated that I has the capacity and tenacity to lead this work. That's not to say that I do this alone, but my journey has taught me how and when to ask for guidance and apply outside expertise. If this is a hundred-mile journey, I know that I've really just left the starting line. For this to be effective, I must continue to bolster my organizations' infrastructure and bring resources and scale to projects like Hope House so that it can spread gradually through the world into the most underserved communities and bring its full suite of supports along with it. For Hope House is far more than a residence for the women inside, it is a program hub for all our activities in a region. A Hope House could house (for example) the legislative policy effort for a region, the employment effort to open jobs opportunities for formerly incarcerated women, and the Angel Food Delivery Program that ensures food security for women and families.

I am well positioned to deliver this project because I am showing, right now, that I can build each of the elements to create true transformation. 

This year, as I prepared to move ahead with our NYC, national, and international Hope House expansion, I was simultaneously planning the Faces and Voices national tour—changing the narrative of women and girls affected by incarceration—to launch at Lincoln Center on the fifth anniversary of my release from prison: May 5, 2020. We worked through February to finalize artists, speakers, and corporate partners. We booked Lincoln Center and signed contracts that I felt sure would lead to a dynamic and powerful kick-off event.

As Covid-19 began to spread, it soon became clear that our event--and all events--would be canceled. Not only did we face a huge economic loss, we soon faced the horror of seeing so many of the people we loved in this work becoming infected and, tragically, dying. The overlapping financial blows and heartbreaks could have been debilitating, but we rallied. On May 5, we hosted a successful virtual event that will serve as the foundation for our 2021 national in-person tour. And while we have slowed our Hope House growth, I am thrilled to say that we have opened a new residence in New Orleans and are committed to continued growth in NYC, Trinidad, and beyond.

I am considered a leader in the field of criminal justice reform, especially as it affects women and girls. I have been honored to be invited to speak and have led efforts for #cut50 and NYUJ in addition to my own projects. I speak regularly with news outlets and offer insight and guidance on legislative policy advocacy campaigns. And while I deeply appreciate these opportunities to contribute, they do not reflect of the full leadership that I seek to embody each day and the fundamental global shift that I seek. 

I know the shame of failing to live up to my own beliefs and values, the damage that I did to others and the way those same actions damaged me. I also know grace and the transformational power of healing, love, and belief. But the thing I know most fundamentally is that my story, my experiences, my facility building programs, and my ability to frame issues, affect policy, and shape narratives can transform the lived experiences of women and girls throughout the world. I am committed to elevating the voices of those most affected by this crisis and together we will end poverty and incarceration of women and girls!

My work links three essential components for systemic transformation: direct service, advocacy, and narrative change programs through The LOHM, entrepreneurship and business development through TKS Ventures, and public storytelling, narrative work through my media engagements, public speaking, and film/TV projects. Our goal is nothing short of a global shift in the treatment of and opportunities for women and girls and we must work to achieve this goal at every step of the system. 

I've done my best to describe this in other elements of the application, but I will summarize them here:

Through LOHM, we combine highly individualized direct service work, legislative policy advocacy, and pathways into transformational employment, educational, and entrepreneurship opportunities. Our measurement and evaluation tools are best tuned to our hands-on direct service work, but we are keenly aware that our broader systemic work requires measurement, evaluation, and reporting. We continue to work to develop and implement internal metrics for these programs—progress against legislative goals, speaking engagements for our speakers bureau, the reach of our high profile media engagements—even as we partner with the academy or private enterprise for third party, independent impact evaluation. 

The initial pathways for our direct service work are designed to meet the immediate needs of women and girls—safe housing, nutritious food—while creating opportunities for long term well being. Through this work, women develop and learn to share their experiences and apply those experiences in professional, advocacy, and entrepreneurial settings. Over time, and with sustained holistic support, these same women build lives that are both independent and inter-related with the change they wish to create in the world. Put simply, they both thrive as individuals and contribute the project to end poverty and incarceration of women and girls.

Our direct service work through the LOHM reaches approximately 6,000 people each year through a combination of core programs. By far our largest program, the Angel Food Delivery Project provides nutritious groceries to more than 5,500 people each year and will grow as funding allows. Our other core programs are far more intensive and long term. 

Through my radio show and related media, we know that we reach (conservatively) tens of thousands of individuals with stories that inspire change and systemic transformation. As I build more direct action projects in this field, our reach will both grow and deepen as we activate our networks to drive real systemic change. 

At the same time, we intend to radically expand our Hope House model throughout NYC, the United States, and the world. We are currently evaluating opportunities to grow Hope House in the near term to offer safe housing and programming to hundreds of women and girls each year. 

I seek to achieve immediate benefit for the women I am committed to serving and long-term, systemic transformation for all women and girls. My public/media work is designed to inspire others, drive lasting change, and create conditions for systemic transformation. At the same time, there are millions of women and families affected by a system grounded in racism and misogyny. As we work to transform the systems that affect them, we must also offer immediate and tangible relief and opportunities for them to live safe and productive lives. 

I run into barriers every day in this work. Our systems are designed to absorb and deflect radical change, not to be transformed. At the same time, direct service work that can replace and obviate punitive criminal justice systems must be built and maintained as we dismantle outmoded systems. These projects are being done in parallel and so, even as they will save money in the longterm, are quite expensive in the short term. I have been fortunate to build relationships with business leaders and the philanthropic community to support both the direct service work that I lead and encourage systemic change, but we must increase the scale and scope of this project by an order of magnitude to achieve the global shift that we seek.

I have partnered with companies like Chanel, Twitter, Square, and Uber and have long-standing partnerships with fellow non-profit organizations like #cut50, NYUJ, and the Opportunity Agenda. With our business partners, we look both for support of ideas and willingness to speak for systems change AND direct change like hiring, training, and mentoring formerly incarcerated women. 

With our direct service/nonprofit partners, we look to support and build shared strengths. Our food program regularly offers meals and support to women served by other organizations and we offer training and guidance to young people affected by parental incarceration at organizations like We Got Us Now and The New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents.

By combining the efforts of my related for-profit entities with my nonprofit direct service organization, I believe I have created a funding stream that can help sustain our core mission programs, a means to effect change at multiple touchpoints in the system, and a demonstration that corporate social responsibility is good business.

At the same time, for The LOHM to grow and thrive, we must continue to seek out traditional philanthropic partnerships and novel funding that can sustain and allow us to scale this work. 

The expenses related to The LOHM are $1,642,762. 

I know that my project and goals are ambitious and involve multiple, complicated, overlapping systems. I also know that my drive and my experience can truly transform these systems. I am excited that The Elevate Prize offers both financial support and partnerships that can help me build my project to end poverty and incarceration of women and girls. I am eager to work with the network of Elevate Prize Global Heroes and partners to identify and address further barriers to achieving this goals.

At the same time, as a leader who began this project just five years ago, I know that I could benefit greatly from the expertise and guidance of my peers and those who share a passion for transformative change. I have worked to build every element of my project even as I am running the organizations. I know that we need significant infrastructure expertise to create client/customer CRM systems and strengthen our evaluation, analysis, and reporting capacity. I am also excited to share what I have learned and experienced with there Elevate community.