Practical support when timing matters most

Support pathway

A carved wooden hand propping up a leaning tree branch, symbolizing steady support.

Requests come through the DC Public Defender Service. RCAN congregations then coordinate practical, short-term support that helps people stabilize quickly and move toward longer-term reentry goals. RCAN usually receives 2-3 urgent requests each week.

1. Request received
RCAN receives a specific short-term need through the DC Public Defender Service. All individuals are people PDS represents or has previously represented.
2. Network mobilizes
RCAN shares information with the full network. Each congregation determines whether it is able to help with a particular request — then coordinates volunteers, resources, or funding.
3. Stabilization
Immediate barriers are reduced so individuals can focus on longer-term reentry goals — housing, employment, and community.

Emergency Assistance

Each week RCAN receives requests to help clients of the Public Defender Service who are returning from incarceration. People often are released from prison with little or no resources and need help with basics such as food, clothing and emergency shelter. RCAN assists these men and women with gift cards to places like Giant Food, Target and CVS where they can get the basic necessities for their reentry into the community.

Congregations in RCAN often collect food and clothing for these individuals to supplement what they are able to purchase and also sometimes get donations of furniture to help furnish an apartment. Individuals returning to the community also need cell phones they can use to help get and keep a job, arrange appointments, and communicate with health professionals and so often RCAN will provide a phone as well as prepaid minutes they can use.

Prison Friendship Project

About 4,000 people from Washington, DC are scattered in federal prisons across the country. Most are incarcerated hundreds of miles from their families, in conditions of isolation and deprivation that are hard to imagine. Many have served long sentences and lost contact with family and friends. A human connection from the outside offers hope, affirms their humanity, and helps set the stage for successful reentry.

To increase personal connections between RCAN supporters and DC PDS clients who are currently incarcerated, RCAN created the Prison Friendship Project. Any individual — or small group — who would like to become a "Prison Friend" will be matched with a PDS client serving a sentence in the Bureau of Prisons.

RCAN supports Prison Friends with background on the client, access to lawyers and social workers, guidelines for writing letters and sending items, and ideas for correspondence.

New pen pal matches: 23
Letters being sent now: 40

Learn about the background and current situation of the person they are matched with
Build a relationship through letters and reading materials
Give gifts on special occasions to the person's commissary account — providing access to food, drinks, toiletries, and personal items
Provide assistance in any other mutually agreed-upon way as the relationship develops
A single committed person can be just as meaningful as a group.

Bike Ministry

Many people returning from prison need some form of transportation to get around the community and one way RCAN meets this need is by providing them with free bicycles. RCAN works with Manuel Vera who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and loves to restore donated bicycles and provide them for PDS clients and others who are in need.

Manny has restored more than 1,000 bicycles through the years and many of those bicycles now go to individuals identified by RCAN who use them to get to work, run errands or simply for recreation and fun.

To donate a bike to be refurbished or for more information, email dcrcan2018@gmail.com.

"As long as I'm getting bikes and people want bikes, I think I'm going to keep this going for quite some time."

— Manuel Vera

A donated bike ready for Manuel Vera to restore.
A restored bicycle ready for its new rider.

Beauty Behind Bars: The Transformative Power of Arts in Confinement

Hosted at Studio Gallery in January 2025 and curated by Anokhi Shah and LaVander Williams, Beauty Behind Bars featured art and poetry by PDS clients, including Fernard Strowbridge, Arlis Hicks-Bey, Curtis Dickson, David Watkins, Harry Ellis, Keith Starr, and others.

The exhibit invited audiences to see resilience and humanity beyond incarceration. RCAN churches later hosted the collection locally, and PDS attorneys used this context in advocacy tied to release efforts under the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act.

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Tough times do not last, but tough people do. My mantra is positive consistency, striving to do right regardless of one's circumstances.

— Fernard Strowbridge

PDS staff, RCAN volunteers, and PDS clients at the Beauty Behind Bars event.
A PDS client stands beside his mural at the exhibition.

Holiday Gifts

Each year at Christmas, RCAN makes a special effort to identify and assist families of PDS clients who are in need. For each of the past few years, we have helped ten families that each had multiple children with necessities like food and clothing as well as gifts for each family member. RCAN Board Member Connie Kurihara has coordinated this program with the assistance from members of several congregations.

In addition, in 2025 RCAN helped provide gifts for 120 juveniles who were detained at the Youth Services Center during Christmas. RCAN worked with attorney Kayla Wyatt who identified this need and made arrangements for all of the young people to get at least one gift.

Kayla found a way to make their holiday season just a little better by making every kid at YSC feel loved and cared for.

— DC PDS

Gift bags prepared for youth at the Youth Services Center.
A restored bicycle ready for delivery.
A bicycle and gift bags prepared by RCAN supporters.

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