Hi!
We are high school students currently working on a Praxis project to initiate change in our city’s and surrounding communities’ prison systems. Our goal for this project is to expand the New Leash on Life USA Program to Montgomery County. The New Leash on Life USA is a Pennsylvania non-profit organization that has been helping to reform the prison system since August 2011. Each inmate who is approved for the program is given a dog to care for and train over the course of 12 weeks. The inmates also engage in workshops for trainning the dogs and others that prepare them for re-entry into the community, such as life skills and job readiness. The dogs in the program are chosen with the prison scenery in mind. The sweet pups involved were about to be euthanized or are have had trouble being adopted. If all things are done accodingly, the inmates graduate from the program and the dogs are adopted by families. Each inmate is granted a paid job or internship at local animal shelters, hospitals, and facilities almost immediately after the graduation/adoption. The program brings out the nurturing, loving, and empathetic side of each inmate.
This program has worked very well in the Philadelphia prison system. It has given the inmates an opportunity to care and look after another living being. Not one, but two lives are being saved thanks to New Leash on Life USA. Our goal is to expand this program and make it well known, first to Montgomery County, then the nation! Everyone will be giving two paws up for New Leash on Life USA!
