The InnerChange Freedom Initiative® (IFI) was a privately funded program that provided educational, values-based services to prisoners on a voluntary and noncompulsory basis to help prepare them to re-enter the workplace, religious and community life, and family and social relationships. In 2016, the program was renamed the Prison Fellowship Academy®.
Success is more easily achieved when you have supporters who genuinely care for you. Just ask Bobby Lopez. In this week's Prison Fellowship® Insider, Bobby shares how Prison Fellowship's InnerChange Freedom Initiative® helped him become a new man.
The goal of InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) is to assist prisoners seeking a lasting, positive change of lifestyle by introducing them to a new value system. At IFI Bobby found God and a group of counselors who supported and encouraged him.
For many former prisoners, the path to a better future looks lonely and hard. More than half of those who are released will be re-incarcerated within three years.
But Bobby's future is different.
"I'm really grateful to Prison Fellowship for giving me the [tools] I can use in every day basis. For directing me to be a godly man," Bobby says. "To be able to have that drive in my heart to walk with God."
Today Bobby is out of prison and working, supporting his wife and children.
"I just thank everybody for the chance to be able to live and have a second chance at life," says Bobby.
SUPPORT THE WORK OF PRISON FELLOWSHIP
At Prison Fellowship we 'remember those in prison.' We believe in second chances, and that prison should be a place of rehabilitation. Through our programs, we offer incarcerated men and women hope, encouragement, and support, so that people like Bobby can be transformed.