Our 2025 year-end series of newsletters highlighted a variety of our program partners’ reflections on the profound need for structures of belonging: the spaces rooted in empathy, accountability, and connection that our work creates.
Here is a collection of those stories from the frontlines of our work with first responders, educators, incarcerated folks and those reentering society this last year, as they’ve described the impact and necessity of our work.
Our Executive Director, Jared Seide, offers some context for the story of our work this year in an evocative piece explaining how our use of the empty chair in council invites participants to consider who we may be “othering,” to resist hardening ourselves toward our neighbor and to remember and celebrate our shared narrative and profound commonalities in these challenging, divisive times.
During the Thanksgiving season, we focus on the themes of gratitude and community impact. This newsletter highlights the organization’s work in fostering social connection and emotional intelligence through council programs in prisons, community centers and law enforcement agencies. We share success stories of transformation and resilience and invite continued partnership to help expand our reach in the coming year.
This holiday season, if you share the vision, you can wear the vision, courtesy of our new Beyond Us & Them shop! Join us in a new call to action: support our work by wearing the message. We invite you to check out our assortment of BU&T products, knowing that your purchase supports council programs for incarcerated individuals, law enforcement and community members.
This communique focuses on Giving Tuesday, highlighting an opportunity for supporters to have their impact doubled through a matching gift challenge. We invite our community to contribute to our mission of healing systemic divides and expanding our reach in the coming year.
We celebrate the season by shining a light on the inspiring and transformative impact of our programming inside California prisons. Here, we share new insights about the profound and powerful impact our council programs have on incarcerated individuals, correctional staff and community members. Our work bridges divides and creates new possibilities for transformation and growth.
This week, we highlight our work with first responders, emphasizing our POWER program’s commitment to fostering social connection and emotional intelligence in law enforcement. We share the success of our initiatives with police officers, illustrating how our work helps cultivate compassion in the public safety sector. We offer stories of personal growth and systemic impact and invite our supporters to contribute to our mission, helping to ensure that we can continue to provide these vital tools for healing and resilience in the year ahead.
We extend warm holiday wishes to our community and offer “five ways to nourish your relationships this holiday.” We also highlight the success of our efforts to bring council practice to diverse settings, including prisons and community organizations. Creating and sharing effective ways to embody connection and compassion is how we further our mission to foster empathy and resilience, as we move into the new year.
We are committed to supporting individuals as they navigate the transition from prison back into society. This newsletter offers a series of first-hand testimonials and video snippets about the inspiring success of our Los Angeles Reentry Collaborative, an initiative dedicated to “Creating Community After Incarceration.” We’re eager to showcase the power of restorative practices in reducing recidivism and building support networks and we invite our community to invest in our mission of fostering long-term healing and successful reintegration for returning citizens.
As our year-end campaign draws to a close, we issue a call for support, emphasizing the urgency of our mission to foster empathy and connection. We highlight the life-changing impact of our council programs—from our work with incarcerated individuals and correctional staff to our initiatives with law enforcement and community groups—and explain how these efforts help dismantle the “us versus them” mentality.
By sharing our vision for a more compassionate and resilient society, we invite our community to continue making the world a kinder place by building bridges.
If you haven’t yet seen it, you can celebrate your involvement by viewing our 2025 IMPACT REPORT here.
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