About IWP
The Idaho Wellness Project grew from a family-led effort into an educational nonprofit shaped by justice-impacted people, families, evidence, and community partnership.
Mission and vision
The Idaho Wellness Project develops and delivers educational programming that supports personal growth, self-development, and successful transition from incarceration to community life. Through evidence-informed education, participants build the emotional, psychological, and practical skills needed to navigate incarceration, reentry, lifelong learning, and meaningful community engagement.
We envision a future where every person impacted by incarceration has access to educational pathways that foster resilience, personal growth, and opportunity, empowering them to pursue higher education, meaningful employment, community leadership, and lifelong success.
Our foundation
Knowledge and learning create pathways to lasting change.
Awareness, responsibility, and practice make new choices possible.
Preparation supports the journey from incarceration to community life.
Belonging grows through families, peers, partners, and shared responsibility.
Education opens doors to work, leadership, and lifelong success.
From a family-led fundraiser to an educational nonprofit.
Our story
Inside Idaho Maximum Security Institution, Rudy, Mirza, and Mikey were frustrated by how few opportunities they were given to show that they genuinely wanted to learn, take responsibility, and change. They began bringing men together for group work and created S.H.I.F.T., Self Help Initiative For Truth.
Truth sits at the heart of the name because change begins with honesty. It asks people to face choices, harm, patterns, strengths, and responsibilities without denying the past or surrendering the future.
Their families saw the value of the work and began the Idaho Wellness Project Fundraiser to support outdoor gym and wellness equipment. The men understood that physical and emotional wellbeing strengthen one another, and they wanted those opportunities available to everyone willing to do the work.
When the fundraiser was halted, the hope behind it remained. The Idaho Wellness Project grew from that moment into an educational nonprofit, carrying the original spirit of S.H.I.F.T. into programs shaped by lived experience and strengthened by evidence-informed learning.
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Our leadership
When we began the Idaho Wellness Project Fundraiser, we carried so much hope. We were incredibly proud of what our loved ones were trying to achieve. Rehabilitation is supposed to be about creating genuine opportunities for change, and we wanted to stand beside them, share their vision, and help make it possible.
The men had been given approval to purchase gym equipment as part of S.H.I.F.T. They understood that physical and emotional wellbeing are deeply connected. When both are supported and brought into alignment, meaningful and lasting change really becomes possible.
They believed these opportunities should be available to everyone who genuinely wanted to transform their life, not only to those living in the limited areas where most programming appeared to be concentrated. They wanted to create an inclusive space where men could learn together, support one another, take responsibility, and demonstrate their commitment to change.
For a time, everything looked promising. Then the effort was halted.
We did not fully understand why, but I knew in that moment that their work could not simply be allowed to disappear. What they had created deserved to be recognized beyond the prison walls. It needed to continue, not only for the men, but also for the families holding onto hope and preparing for the day their loved ones return home.
How do we want people to return home? Do we want them to have a genuine opportunity to succeed, or do we want a revolving door that leads them back into the same system?
That question became part of the reason I created the Idaho Wellness Project. This is an educational nonprofit shaped by people directly impacted by incarceration, created for people navigating its realities, and strengthened by evidence-informed education and learning from outside the system.
I am trained in social work through University College Cork in Ireland and have more than a decade of experience supporting individuals, families, and communities affected by trauma, addiction, homelessness, mental health challenges, exclusion, and complex systems.
My education taught me to look beyond a person’s immediate circumstances and understand the experiences, relationships, environments, and systems that have shaped their life. My work has strengthened my belief that people are more than the most difficult chapter of their story. Accountability and compassion must work together if change is going to happen.
As the Idaho Wellness Project developed, I continued studying trauma, adverse childhood experiences, resilience, nervous system regulation, desistance, adult education, rehabilitation, reentry, and community development. This learning does not replace the knowledge of people with lived experience. It helps us place evidence, structure, and educational support around what they already understand from living through the system themselves.
The Idaho Wellness Project brings these different forms of knowledge together. Lived experience, family experience, professional practice, education, research, and community leadership all have a place in this work.
It exists to carry the original hope behind S.H.I.F.T. forward, to recognize people’s capacity for change, support families throughout the journey, and create meaningful educational pathways through incarceration, reentry, and lifelong learning.
Through the Idaho Wellness Project, I have also developed Writing for Change and Creative Work Worth Sharing as educational pathways supporting wellness, reflection, connection, and personal growth. These spaces give justice-impacted writers and artists a platform through which their work can be shared, seen, and valued beyond the walls, while creating opportunities for readers to encounter lives and perspectives beyond their own. Where possible, they may also help contributors connect with professional publishers, literary representatives, arts organizations, and others who can support the future development of their work. At their heart is the belief that meaningful connection is itself a form of wellness: it can lessen isolation, deepen understanding, restore belonging, and remind people that their voices and creative work still hold value. Everything is shared with the contributor’s knowledge and consent, grounded in dignity, and guided by the principle that each creator retains ownership and full rights to their work.