Dede
Dede had a child to raise and nowhere to turn. She’d just spent two long years imprisoned on Rikers Island. Dede knew one thing: She didn’t want to return to the life that led her there. She wanted to start anew.
With a stroke of good fortune, Dede discovered Hour Children, a nonprofit organization that provides housing and services to incarcerated (and formerly incarcerated) mothers and their children. Hour Children accepted her application and offered her an apartment in My Mother’s House, a supportive housing residence in Queens.
Dede and her daughter Mariah now live alongside other women and children. She has the support of peers and counselors to help her stay safe, strong and focused on her daughter.
“I think all the time, if I didn’t come here, where would I be right now?” Dede asks. “Probably back on the corner, with the hustlers…what I was raised with. I thank God and I thank Hour Children for this program.”
Dede and Mariah have a home, friends, even work: Dede mentors children whose parents are in prison, as part of the Hour Friend In Deed program.
“There’s so many of us that we always have a person to lean on,” she says. “Even a hug will change the way we think, you know?”
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