John,

Coming home after spending years — often decades — of one’s life wrongfully incarcerated is filled with challenges for most people exonerated of crimes they didn’t commit. The world often looks drastically different. Time has passed, technology and culture have dramatically changed, and perhaps most difficult, many loved ones are gone. It can be incredibly difficult for someone to process and adapt to the change and to accept all of the experiences that were taken from them.

Throughout my years at the Innocence Project, I’ve seen so many clients come home and struggle as they are faced with rebuilding their lives from scratch. The trauma they endure because of the failures in our criminal legal system doesn't end with release.

That’s where our social work team comes in. We work with Innocence Project clients every single day and provide support to exonerated and freed people as they begin new lives. It’s difficult and deeply intense work, but it’s necessary — and we can’t do it without your support.

This month is Social Work Month, so in honor of it, I’m asking you to please make a donation before the Innocence Project's end-of-month fundraising deadline to help make sure our team has all of the resources we need to support exonerees with whatever they might need.

Every day, our social work team — Rodney, Eman, Kyana, Ummer, Colin, and myself — helps exonerees and recently freed clients find housing, employment, and health care, and provides wrap-around support services to our clients from the moment they step into freedom.

We provide assistance with simple things that so many of us take for granted — from locating birth certificates and social security numbers to finding family members they’ve lost touch with to obtaining a driver’s license or buying their first car. And we do it all while also offering emotional support.

It can be really tough work, but seeing an exoneree meet their goals and knowing that this team played a part in that — nothing beats that feeling.

So please, in honor of Social Work Month, show your support for the work we do every day by making a donation before this month ends at midnight tonight.

Thanks,

Suzy Salamy
Director of Social Work
Innocence Project