Gold canyon heart & Home
In 2006, a group of incarcerated men joined together on common ground after realizing their time was best served by helping others. Inside the confined walls of prison they developed a full curriculum of peer lead courses to teach their fellow inmates fundamental life-skills and recovery principles to prepare each other for reentry into society. Family members of Joe Chiappetta, a founding member, applied for 501(c)3 status for a non-profit entity which they named Gold Canyon Heart & Home (GCHH). The success of this led to the corrections administration allowing GCHH to support peer mentors having their own classroom settings unsupervised by corrections officers.
Of the 140+ original mentors of GCHH’s peer-to-peer program that have been released, none have recidivated. These original mentors were responsible for helping over 4,200 men and woman successfully reenter the community.
Today, GCHH’s programs have been adopted and implemented by New Freedom in a modernized behavioral health setting. GCHH still carries out their original mission of peer-to-peer mentorship through a collaborative effort called the GCHH New Freedom Project, this time working from the outside in. Placement to New Freedom primarily depends on the GCHH New Freedom Project mentors working with prospective candidates during their incarceration. If they are eligible and choose to commit to the program, our transportation department picks them up at the gate.
the vision from december 2019
We do ask that you return one good deed with another and perform an act of kindness. This generous cycle of compassion and goodwill continues indefinitely.
We do ask that you return one good deed with another and perform an act of kindness. This generous cycle of compassion and goodwill continues indefinitely.
In 2006, a group of incarcerated men joined together on common ground after realizing their time was best served by helping others. Inside the confined walls of prison they developed a full curriculum of peer lead courses to teach their fellow inmates fundamental life-skills and recovery principles to prepare each other for reentry into society. Family members of Joe Chiappetta, a founding member, applied for 501(c)3 status for a non-profit entity which they named Gold Canyon Heart & Home (GCHH). The success of this led to the corrections administration allowing GCHH to support peer mentors having their own classroom settings unsupervised by corrections officers.
Of the 140+ original mentors of GCHH’s peer-to-peer program that have been released, none have recidivated. These original mentors were responsible for helping over 4,200 men and woman successfully reenter the community.
Today, GCHH’s programs have been adopted and implemented by New Freedom in a modernized behavioral health setting. GCHH still carries out their original mission of peer-to-peer mentorship through a collaborative effort called the GCHH New Freedom Project, this time working from the outside in. Placement to New Freedom primarily depends on the GCHH New Freedom Project mentors working with prospective candidates during their incarceration. If they are eligible and choose to commit to the program, our transportation department picks them up at the gate.
more the an organization - a mission
“GCHH isn’t just a nonprofit or an organization, it’s a mission. The vision for what that mission became started in 2004. There was a 22-year old man who slept in the lower bunk of my cell. He was crying in the middle of the night and it made me angry. He was getting out in 2 weeks and I was serving a 35 year sentence—what did he have to cry about?
I asked him why he was crying and he told me it was because he didn’t know where his mother was or how to find her. He’d been to prison twice. His childhood home was an empty place with little food or parental supervision. He got into drugs early because he didn’t know of any other way to cope.
After hearing more about this story, I told my family about this young man and we were able to locate the missing mother. When his mother found out that her son was crying for her in prison, something shifted in her. She came to the prison to pick him up and they were able to rebuild their relationship together. Today, he’s got a manager’s job and is married with children. He’s never gone back to prison.
It’s About Giving Them Hope
The vision of GCHH started crystallizing. It was about giving them hope, taking the next step, whether it be improving their communication skills, teaching them about business, or maybe even just giving them some math tutoring—something my partner, Najee, did a lot of.
One day a grant opportunity for providing disease prevention education came along. People just started coming together naturally to help others. This same group eventually morphed into certified facilitators, teachers, and mentors, becoming the founders of this organization on the inside.
These mentors would help with fundraising for charities, solving problems on the yard—whatever was needed. Najee probably prevented more riots with effective communication than a can of tear gas ever could.
Our mentors crossed racial boundaries to bring people together and stepped across the ‘red line’ to embrace the idea of working with staff because we were all one community.”
-Joe Chiappetta Jr.
The Revolving Door of Incarceration
A question formed in my mind. Why do people keep coming back over and over again to prison? I saw one glimpse in the young man’s story but wondered if he was just an isolated incident?
Prison is a microcosm of all the different kinds of people you meet in life. There are successful business people, doctors and attorneys. There are vagrants and homeless people. There’s everything in between. It didn’t matter how much money they had, how educated they were, most of them were stuck in the revolving door of incarceration.
The question haunted and angered me. At the time, I was coming to terms with my own problems and anger issues, and I knew I wanted to be part of the solution. I’d ask them, ‘What happened to you?’ There would always be the blaming of someone else or some uncontrollable circumstance.
All of a sudden it hit me—unrealistic sense of entitlement and expectations and no personal accountability. It was across the board, none of us had shown the audacity to hold a mirror up to ourselves and look at the part that we played and take responsibility. I had to do it for myself, and it was a frighteningly enlightening thing to see.
You have to look in that mirror and take responsibility for what you see. You have to pick yourself up off the ground and ask yourself, ‘What am I going to do about it? Do I have the courage to believe that there’s something more out there for me?’
I found if you gave somebody a potential solution—just a possibility or a goal— and you gave them a glimpse of this often lamented four letter word called Hope, they’d see that there’s something they can do. They could find a job or a place to live—whatever it may be—and things would start shifting for them too.
“We exist to free people from themselves...”
-Joseph Chiappetta Jr.,
Founding Peer Mentor
“We exist to free people from themselves...”
-Joseph Chiappetta Jr.,
Founding Peer Mentor
What we do
Through peer-to-peer relationship, we mentor inmates through the reentry process. We inspire hope while they’re still incarcerated and then we provide support and resources upon release.
Becoming a Better Version of Yourself
“GCHH isn’t just a nonprofit. It’s a vision that was started many years ago in a very difficult and desolate place. Joe C. and Najee discovered that their life was made purposeful when they helped other people achieve some sense of purpose in their life. We’re not talking about conceptual purpose.
We’re talking about tangible power of purpose for living. When these two men incarcerated with life sentences who were never going to see the light of day started introducing people to the successful strategies for freeing themselves, even in those difficult conditions, they themselves became free.
Eventually they walked out of that prison and a number of us who believed in that vision, joined that vision. We still firmly believe we have to meet you where you are and free you where you are at. It’s freedom of thought that allows people to walk freely in the world.
That’s what GCHH is about. GCHH is a vision of people helping people become better versions of themselves on an ongoing basis.
The Symbiosis Between Addiction & Reentry
One of the things that the chains of addiction has in common with the physical bonds of incarceration is a similar imprisonment. With addiction, you are imprisoned in limiting thoughts about yourself. So it doesn’t matter if you’re secured by walls and fences or by flesh and thought patterns, you are imprisoned in either one.
We find in people who are incarcerated that they have both types of imprisonment going on—both chemical dependency and their other problems that have led to incarceration. If that doesn’t get addressed—if we don’t free them in there, they’ll never live free out here.
The goal of recovery is to awaken to your unique purpose and power. You learn to retell your story, overcoming or outgrowing the fears or limiting thoughts that prevent you from becoming a better version of yourself.
I don’t really know how recovery works. I know there’s an innate goodness in every individual and we find a way to tap into that. It’s a one-on-one individual thing as individual as each of us. When I sit down with someone, I ask them, ‘What do you think is wrong with you?’ After they ponder that for bit, I point out to them, ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re exactly as God intended, now when would you like to wake up.'”
–Joseph McDonald
I don’t really know how recovery works. I know there’s an innate goodness in every individual and we find a way to tap into that. It’s a one-on-one individual thing as individual as each of us. When I sit down with someone, I ask them, ‘What do you think is wrong with you?’ After they ponder that for bit, I point out to them, ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re exactly as God intended, now when would you like to wake up.'”
–Joseph McDonald
GCHH is a vision and a mission of sponsorship, mentorship and peer-to-peer education with an emphasis on recovery, reentry & integration.
MATTY
This page was inspired by GCHH Staff, Matt Barrick.
Communications Supervisor
Released August 2018
25.5 Years Served
