Realness Project’s mission is to create safer communities for all. We break cycles of violence, addiction, and incarceration by teaching relational and emotional skills that create safer, healthier communities—inside prison walls and beyond. One person who disrupts a pattern of abuse, neglect, substance misuse, or violence can change generations to come.
Founded in 2018, Realness Project delivers intensive, trauma-informed courses grounded in neuroscience, psychology, and Authentic Relating practices. These educational and experiential leadership programs build empathy, emotional regulation, and communication—protective factors proven to reduce substance use, violence, and recidivism.
Through fun, interactive workshops, Realness Project inspires people in prison to be better parents, family members, employees, colleagues, bosses, and community members.
To date, Realness Project has more than 1,400 graduates! Men and women across nine Colorado Department of Corrections facilities and hundreds more now living in our communities. Graduates demonstrate the ability to build safe & meaningful connections with their children, parents, and colleagues, reflecting measurable gains in communication skills, sustained behavioral change, peer accountability, and leadership development.
Participants progress through leadership levels—building inspired community as they advance. We have waitlists of people in prison who want to learn better ways to communicate and resolve conflict. We have peer-led alumni circles that extend connection and accountability into families and communities statewide. And we have a recidivism rate of just 6%, compared to the state average of 44.5%.
Over 80% of our graduates are parents, so learning these vital communication skills breaks generational cycles of abuse, neglect, abandonment, addiction and incarceration.
We need your support today to help people emerge from prison retooled for a better future!
Learning Outcomes of Realness Project programming:
Empathy
Advanced listening skills
Nervous System Regulation
Increased Self Awareness
Conflict management without violence
Emotional Intelligence & Resilience
Nonviolent Communication
Vulnerability, Humility, and Dignity
Transforming the culture of incarceration by empowering human connection.
Human connection is an antidote to addiction, loneliness, anxiety, and depression, and generates empathy, compassion, and care. When people care about themselves and the people around them, they are less likely to commit crimes against others.
Realness Project works with incarcerated people to address trauma and teach communication and conflict management skills. Our graduates emerge into our communities as better parents, neighbors and citizens. Our results are impressive: 5% recidivism. Human connection heals.
Vision: A justice system re-built upon the foundation of human dignity.
In 2017, Laurie Lazar began co-facilitating a Victim Impact Class at the Boulder County Jail. While the participants were engaged in the discussions, she wondered if the class had any long-term, transformational impact on the participants’ lives.
With an undergrad in Business, a Masters in Education and a Certification in a powerful relational technology called Authentic Relating (AR), Laurie’s curiosity began to grow as she started to visualize adding in the critical tools of AR into the curriculum. For example, how might the inmate’s lives be impacted if they were trained to navigate conflict through skillful communication rather than violence? Could the experiences of AR give incarcerated people a higher percentage of success once released from incarceration?
In a serendipitous moment, Laurie connected with friend and colleague Ryel Kestano, who was using AR methods while mentoring men at the same jail. Together, Laurie and Ryel brought the first-ever Authentic Relating workshop to the Boulder County Jail in January of 2018.
Many of the men in this workshop had been in Laurie’s Victim Impact class, and now she was able to observe their marked difference in engagement and excitement through the AR method.
After two days of training, participants began to share about the ineffectiveness of their previous therapy and intervention programs, expressing that there was nothing like this program offered in the correctional system and how vital it would be to expand into the Department of Corrections regionally and nationally.
That weekend was a game-changer for Laurie. She began reaching out to prisons throughout Colorado, offering the two-day workshop. From the movies, many of us know that it's not so easy to break out of prison. But what we don’t learn is that it's also hard to break in! Laurie called many prisons before one finally said yes. The first prison they delivered The ART of Being Human in was the highest level of security prison, Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, CO. The class was half men who are labeled as sex offenders and half mentally challenged men. They didn’t know if this group would be receptive. And yet, even though the skepticism, a transformation occurred.
Laurie’s questions were being answered as she witnessed personal transformation happening for the participants. After delivering the workshop to dozens of incarcerated people in several institutions, the Realness Project was born!
Organization name
Realness Project
2018
Tax id (EIN)
83-1629445
Category
Community Improvement & Capacity Building, Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy, Crime & Legal-Related, Human Services, Social Science, Mental Health & Crisis Intervention
Organization Size
Medium Organization
Address
1750 30TH ST PMB 204CO, US