The New Hampshire Department of Corrections (DOC) joined with the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement to implement Choose Love programming to the state's incarcerated residents.
The Corrections Choose Love Program incorporates the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to ensure the material is accessible in a prison environment and includes daily activities that are implemented during the start of groups and education classes that reinforce and support social and emotional learning skills.
The Choose Love programs teach both children and adults how to thoughtfully respond with love in any situation by using the Choose Love Formula (Courage + Gratitude + Forgiveness + Compassion-in-Action), and offers ways to handle adversity, have courageous conversations, and to respond with love. It also promotes self-empowerment, resilience, connection, and optimism.
Choose Love includes school programs and many other no-cost programs, including Choose Love for the Home, Communities, Athletic leadership, and the Workplace, in addition to multiple extension programs. The Choose Love programs have been accessed in all 50 states and in more than 100 countries, reaching 2 million children.
DOC staff collaborated with Scarlett Lewis, founder of the Choose Love Movement, Shannon Desilets, program director of the Choose Love Movement in NH, and Amanda Bastoni, Ed.D and research scientist at CAST, Inc., to bring this to fruition.
With funding from DHHS Community Collaborations to Strengthen and Preserve Families, Bastoni was contracted to interface the Choose Love Curriculum and practices to create a social and emotional based programming to pilot at NH Correctional Facility for Women and Shea Farm Transitional Housing Unit. The goal is to incorprate a Choose Love philosophy in all program offerings there.