Every week, our Mission Possible team stays connected with VOTE members on the inside through JPAY, sharing updates, answering questions, and hearing directly about what’s happening behind the walls. These exchanges shape our work and keep us rooted in the people most impacted by this system.
This month, we asked our incarcerated members: What are you proud of this year?
Their answers reflect growth, grief, joy, faith, resilience, and the kind of everyday courage that rarely makes it past the prison gates. These are their words — in their own voices — shared with permission and offered to the community that has their back.
My biggest joy is helping those who cant help themselves.
Terrance J
This year I’m most proud of having the strength and the courage to keep standing after losing everything.
Chris L
I’m proud that my losses wasn’t just losses, they were lessons learned and motivation for me to want better and do better. The pain I felt from letting myself down, ignited a fire that will forever burn because I’ve learned from experience.
I’m thankful for another chance at life — to make right what I got wrong. A lot of my homeboys are gone, and there’s no second chance under the dirt. I’m thankful for my family, who never missed a beat or gave up on me, even when I was ready to give up on myself. And I have to mention VOTE, who’s been through the same struggle I’ve been in and made it through the storm, now being a voice for those of us who can’t always express our thoughts. I’m thankful for all the opportunities coming my way.
Joseph B
I have a lot to be proud of this year. I hugged my autistic daughter who is now 6years old for the first time in her life on a visit.I’m also proud of graduating from the New Men S.A.V.E. Program at Angola and I’m proud of having a relationship with God.I’m most proud of having the opportunity to dance with my two daughter’s age’s 6 and 9 at the God Behind Bars event Father Daughter Dance at Angola.
Donald R
Usually I’m an antisocial and shy person. I’m a part of a program here called Juvenile Awareness Program (J.A.P.). They bring in adolescents from area alternative schools and we give motivational speeches, perform skits, give testimonies, and do Q and A. I was chosen to be the narrator in last years skit and was nervous to the core. This past October we perform another skit for an alternative school and this time I chose to be the narrator. I wanted to overcome the fear I felt. I did it! No fear. Ever since, I’ve been feeling the confidence in me rise. I challenged myself and won. I know that seems to be a small feat, but if you knew me you would understand how great a feat it is.
Ortiz J
Even after 27 consecutive years of imprisonment, I still have not lost hope. This year my hope was renewed after I graduated from Ashland University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Studies. I became the first in my family to finish college. Since I am a tutor in this prisons literacy program, my students also feel that they too have accomplished something. And they have, as they motivated me every step of the way.
Walter W
I’m most proud of my decision making in impulsive, and crucial moments this year. As in the past I’ve failed myself for moviing without meaning, indulging in my frustration, anger. For now I’ve found a start of my purpose with understanding I’ve always been what has hindered me from excelling to my potential. I weight my decision making with aligning it towards my future. understanding the term of the
Dino M
(5 P’s ) proper preparation prevents poor performance. listening to myself or surrounding, others taking heed to sematic issues. I am learning to love me, believe in me , allowing God into my life for I can do NOTHING WITHOUT THE GRACE OF GOD. Being incarcerated is not easy but I’m more free in my mental than I were when I had fredom. All praise be to God for slowing me down to listen, and learn, love … so I can One Day Live, and Not Just Be Living!
There are many things I can say I’m proud of this year. My sobriety, prosperity, and my integrity. My sobriety was a demon that I’ve struggled with inside and outside these prison walls until I arrived to Hunt Corr. Ctr. and submitted to a program called (RDAP) that changed my life. My prosperity, came from this program and the help of mentors and my faith in Jesus Christ… it transformed me and I’ve prevailed with my anger and drug addiction to the point that I’m now a pro visionary mentor in training to help those struggling with what I’ve overcame. My sense of integrity had been a challenge in itself… ‘doing things right when no one is looking’… and believe it or not, someone is always looking. This what defines a persons character trait. These three things transformed me into the man I am today. Every morning I wake up,” I ask God whose life I’m go change today because changing one person life could make a difference in generations to come in that man’s life. No Surrender! No Retreat!
Ahmad M
I’m thankful for everything I experence in life good, painful, and bad because our Lord Jesus Christ die for it all. I’m walking around with a cane stick, I have fluid in my right knee down to my toes. Words of encouragement never let your circumstance stop you from moving foward in life. Stand on what you believe in, and put God first in everything you do, amen.
-Terrell B
Well this year was a good year, and i guess we could call it special to.I got my GED this year, it took two years but I enjoyed every minute of it. Hard work and not giving up is somthing I pick up,also a gang of people. A real good! Time.
-Errol F