Since our founding in 2017, The Ladies of Hope Ministries has built and demonstrated novel solutions to seemingly intractable social issues. Through our Angel Food Delivery Project, we connected families experiencing food insecurity with fresh food from leading food retailers and grocery delivery companies. Our Hope House residential model has offered trauma-informed housing and services to women coming home from prison. We have created a viable alternative to women entering the shelter system or returning to unsafe living situations and have realized an unparalleled success: no women who have completed our Hope Scale program have been convicted of a new crime and returned to prison. And our employment and entrepreneurship programs have built new and durable relationships with the private industry, leading to paid fellowships and the promise of family-supporting, career-pathway employment.
In each case, these solutions began first as demonstration pilots that addressed the unique challenges women, girls, and families face as they navigate the criminal legal system and reentry. Now, The LOHM expansion is bringing these programs to scale, offering system-level interventions and affording system-level savings. To do this, we link with local organizations, philanthropy, industry, and government to combine what we have learned in New York, New Orleans, and across the country with regional needs and regional responses.
By partnering with local organizations and helping to stand up local demonstration projects, we can build a deep trove of data that shows savings to interrelated systems: criminal justice, homelessness and housing, healthcare, education, and employment. Investments in these pilots yield opportunities for government to apply their resources more effectively, ensuring that philanthropy realizes maximum impact for their investment and truly achieve their missions to address and solve the greatest challenges facing our communities today.