NY Daily News – “The Fortune Society helps those ‘formerly incarcerated’ find life after crack”
(Tuesday, August 17th, 2010)
…Then, she went to The Fortune Society.
“Everybody here is beautiful,” she gushed. “They believed in me.”
In the last two months, they helped her get the apartment, offered the GED course and got her substance-abuse counseling.
“Joann takes advantage of everything we offer, to the max,” said Kefalas.
Gardner attends school five days a week, gets counseling one day and is in the city’s Work Experience Program, performing clerical duties at a city agency. At the end of a busy day, she is thrilled to get home to her little place in the Bronx.
Because she has positive things to talk about now, she located her sister and brother and aunt to reconnect with the family she lost touch with 20 years ago.
Her next goal is to rekindle her relationship with her children, two of whom she gave up for adoption and one who was taken from her and is in foster care.
She hopes to become certified to be a drug abuse counselor.
“I know what it’s like,” she said. “I would like to help people.
“It took a long time to get where I am. If I can make it, a lot of other people can make it.”