30 Month Commitment

Qualified students must be willing to make a minimum 30-month (2 years residential accompanied with 6 months of structured transitional living) commitment to a deep rigorous process of personal change. Many stay longer until they feel ready to re-enter society. Students are responsible not just for their own growth—but take on responsibility for the growth of others. Each step they take empowers them to teach those who are slightly newer than they. Essentially, The Other Side Academy is a teaching system built around an “each one, teach one” philosophy of caring for and helping one another.

All students apply voluntarily—although many attend as an alternative to incarceration. These plead guilty to outstanding charges before being offered a place to The Other Side – and are required to serve their full sentence if they elect to leave.

The Other Side Academy is free to everyone who is accepted into the program. We do not receive government money and we are self-sufficient, with revenues from our training schools covering most of our program expenses. All that is required of our participants is a strong desire to change and a willingness to do whatever is asked of them to bring about that change. Everyone works together and learns by doing. It’s a physically and mentally demanding environment. During their stay; students receive an education, acquire marketable vocational and social skills and earn the self-respect necessary to let go of their past. For most, this is the most difficult thing they have ever done.

The How

The Other Side Academy is a 501(c)(3) public non-profit organization where criminals, homeless and substance abusers can change their lives, free of charge. Our comprehensive two-year residential program accompanied with a 6-month transitional program offers vocational training, education, peer counseling, mentoring/leadership training and transitional services.

The Other Side Academy is a “classic therapeutic community.” It is based on one of the most researched and effective models for helping those with long histories of addiction and criminal behavior over the past 70 years. In a therapeutic community, the powerful influence of experienced peers is employed in place of therapists or doctors who don’t share the same life experience as our students. A summary of the research demonstrating the efficacy of this approach is available here.

Participants in our program are called “students” and they represent our society’s most serious social problems—and yet, remarkably, as a group, they provide solutions to one another’s challenges. We do not have doctors, clinical therapists, or counselors at The Other Side Academy. We are not a program based on counseling or therapy. Instead, there is no distinction in the backgrounds of leaders and students other than more time and experience living in The Other Side Academy community and influencing others to change their lives. All have been in and out of jail or prison repeatedly and ultimately, left hopeless for a decent life.

Faculty members at The Other Side Academy are living examples of the efficacy of the program. They themselves have done everything new students are asked to do. Thus they have the credibility to show others how to change as they have done.