Stage One

Support and Personal Development Inside the Penitentiary

“Working as a mentor in H.O.N.O.R. Mentoring has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Being a former high school teacher, I’ve worked with many students, but it just doesn’t compare with my experience in this program.” -M. Carden

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“Telling my story is more therapeutic than someone else saying what’s wrong with me.”

-Quaid, Forgotten Veteran

Veterans are losing their freedom because of defending ours.

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The Triumph Book: HEROES

The Triumph Book: HEROES is a fascinating collection of epic first-person stories from veteran spanning the decades of war, who share how they are winning the worst battles veterans face at home. After initially reading HEROES, program participants will be prepared to work through the narrative therapy process of recording and sharing their own Triumph Stories using a workbook called The Triumph Program. The workbook helps veterans evolve as they process the tragedies and losses they have suffered and gradually look forward, finding purpose in life, setting goals, and exploring who they can serve with the abilities they have gained as a result of their military-experiences.

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The Triumph Program

A Trauma-Based Narrative Therapy Process

The Triumph Program is a trauma-based narrative therapy process assisting incarcerated veterans to put past horrors on paper, work through the anger, survivor’s guilt and fear that PTSD brings, and find purpose and meaning in the experience of war.

After completing 12 weeks of a small Triumph Program Mentoring Group, veterans have their innate desire to serve others (which led them to join the military) reignited as the final sections are focused on setting goals and seeking ways to serve others as a means of healing. The continuation of the program’s therapeutic benefit is contingent upon ample opportunities for service.

The Triumph Program and healing of our Forgotten Heroes (incarcerated veterans) has the potential not only to heal the veterans who participate, but to uplift all inmates within the units where the program is implemented.

“The Triumph Program is dedicated to the belief that ‘The more purpose you find in tragedy, the less painful it becomes.’ As it lives out this motto, the program facilitates veterans with a space to form relationships and view past experiences from a new perspective.“

Kevin Brady

U.S. Representative, Texas' 8th District

Certificates of Commendation

The Triumph Program has been approved by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for use with all incarcerated veterans in the state of Texas and Congressman Brady is providing Certificates of Commendation to all Triumph Program Graduates.

The Triumph Program is available to all inmate populations. The process of discovering, writing and sharing their triumph stories in The Triumph Program Small Mentoring Groups is as effective for all inmates as it is for veterans. Upon completion of The Triumph Program: Veteran Edition, graduates can choose to lead Triumph Groups using the non-military Incarcerated Edition of the program designed for all incarcerated individuals. Such small groups provide rare and essential safe-space environments for inmates to process traumas, grief and pain and heal in deep and life-changing ways

Here in prison, I am surrounded by men who are broken and like myself have been cast away because of their sins and the needs to be met are endless. I thank God after all I have been through over the past decade. My love for my country and the desire to help her prosper has not waned, but, like so many of you all, it still burns bright. While I may never blow another door, clear another corner, or fire another round in defense of my country, my life does not have to be in vain. I can continue to serve my country from inside these walls, pouring into her incarcerated fathers and sons and uncles and brothers, seeking to build them up to be assets to their communities when they are released.”

-Jeff David Yager,

Forgotten Veteran featured in The Triumph Book: HEROES, Eastham Prison Unit Field Minister and co-Founder of H.O.N.O.R. Mentoring.

H.O.N.O.R. Mentoring Communities

Avenues for Giving Service Provides a Sense of Purpose that is often Lacking in the Penitentiary Environment

H.O.N.O.R. Mentoring gives incarcerated veterans effective opportunities to continue serving our country by mentoring and supporting their prison unit neighbors resulting in improved relations and a more positive culture for all who live or work in units where The Triumph Program is present. Avenues for giving service provide the sense of purpose and usefulness that is often lacking as veterans return home from war and which becomes more pronounced in the restricted penitentiary environment.

It is a basic human need to feel our lives matter and fulfill a purpose. Through the H.O.N.O.R. Mentoring program, veterans can set positive examples and lead the way towards growth and development, just as they have gone ahead of us when they protected our country. Through their servant-based leadership, an increase in comradery and positivity unit-wide will lead to a more productive environment in which inmates can serve their time and be prepared to reintegrate back into society.

Opportunities to serve, teach, and lead will be made available to all inmates, but it will be organized and developed by The Veteran Triumph Program Graduates.

Each man or woman operates as a member of multiple communities every moment of his life: as a member of his family, his neighborhood, his city and his nation. As a result, the H.O.N.O.R. community seeks not merely to make better prisoners, but to make better men/women. We seek not only to lower recidivism, but to equip people with the tools necessary to thrive in each of their outside communities.

Since its launch in March 2019, H.O.N.O.R Mentoring has provided the Eastham unit with an innovative model for offender rehabilitation. It is a model that is multi-faceted, drawing together essential rehabilitative needs under the umbrella of a single program. H.O.N.O.R Mentoring is currently serving approximately 250 men on a weekly basis, with many others on a waiting list, and provides offenders with approximately 50 service opportunities to help their neighbors.