“Identify, Cultivate, and Build a Community to Sustain Productive Urban Lifestyles”
Next Steps Fellowship is an annual four day retreat designed for formerly incarcerated men. This retreat offers skill building sessions, leadership workshops, spiritual care and community building, in order for returning citizens to design their next steps.
NFS’s mission is to help and assist individuals instill a social confidence that reinforces his/her efforts at reestablishing one’s self for family and community life, recalibrate self-esteem, and motivate sustainability for change and impact.
On September 24th, Islah LA facilitated a 3-4 day retreat for formerly incarcerated African-Latino American men in Mount Baldy, California. The objective was to provide 12 men who are seeking to improve their own self-worth, with life skills and critical thinking training. As a result, a sense of community was established between two groups who are normally apprehensive of one another’s urban lifestyles.
Next Steps Fellowship (NSF) opened a new market of training, transformative racial justice, and basic leadership development, a model that will transcend its current realm.
Islah LA is a community center promoting peace, healing, and dignity to constituents of South LA. We seek to revitalize family and community through spiritual guidance, educational opportunity, emotional support, civic engagement, and economic empowerment.
Rooted in the Islamic principles of social justice, Islah LA empowers individuals and families in South Los Angeles by providing high quality practical education and direct sevices.
RETREAT ACTIVITY
Next Steps Fellowship is a four day process where we identify, cultivate, and increase an individual’s capacity to sustain a productive lifestyle. NSF identifies your core values through interactive facilitation. Each day is an exercise and a dialogue for personal development.
Day 1: Build bridges and encourage interaction that ensure an impactful retreat.
Day 2: We begin to blueprint our core values: skills, interests, and values.
Day 3: Vision and Mission building.
Day 4: Sign NSF Declaration, a final discussion, and video interviews.
Next Steps' Future
- Follow-up for men.
- Develop a retreat for women.
- Create job referral and recommendation service.
- Database for tracking.
- Create Islah LA employees and volunteers.