DANVILLE, Ill. (WAND) - A local program inside the Danville Correctional Center celebrates its second year.
Building Block is a program that was launched back in February of 2018 with one goal - to make prisoners better members of society.
"It provides offenders with mentoring, programming and kind of a large range of things they may need," said Correctional Counselor John Petersen.
The program was created by the inmates themselves.
"It's really a program that revolves around self-reflection," said co-founder Renaldo Hudson.
The program is run off of four principles: respect, responsibility, ownership and empathy.
"We have a series of different classes that are mentor-driven. Where people can talk about anger, addiction, helping them with effective communication and just a whole different set of things that can help them not only in prison, but the goal is to help them get out of prison and be better members of society," said mentor Michael Brawn.
In 2019, the program had 112 inmates involved. Now, they have 448 involved, including more than 15 mentors.
"We are now training mentors to be mentors in society," said Petersen.
He said organizers are slowly expanding the facility, making changes to the courses and creating new programs.
The Building Block program has been added to the Illinois River Correctional Center. Organizers are working on implementing it at the Vandalia Correctional Center by March 1.
For more information about the program, visit here.
